Breaking News: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key’s real feelings about losing that country’s recent flag referendum have been inadvertently captured on tape by a local freelance cameraman.

Moments before Thursday night’s press conference, the cameraman accidentally dropped a camera bag containing a tape recorder outside the briefing room. The device then recorded Key’s remarks immediately prior to his entrance to give a rehearsed concession speech.

“The real losers here are the people of New Zealand.” Key is heard to say.

“I’m getting on a private jet to Washington, so what do I care? I’ve got places to go and people to see. And you want to talk about legacy? I’ve got over $50 million in the bank and a knighthood in the bag, so I mean, really, at the end of the day, you tell me who the losers are? If those rent-a-referendum wankers don’t want a new flag, that’s fine by me, they can just fuck right off back to the Palmerston North RSA or wherever. I mean, good luck with that! Losers! Fuck them! Fuck them all, actually.”

The tape then goes on to record a telephone conversation, apparently with ex-All Black captain Richie McCaw. An audibly emotional Key thanks McCaw for his support but then completely breaks down.

“Richie, I know we lost and I know you and me have always been about winning but I love you, Richie, I’ve always loved you. I did it all for you.” Key is heard to sob before the tape ends.

– Dissociated Press.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/03/27/i-did-it-all-for-you-secret-recording-captures-keys-flag-referendum-heartbreak/feed/45Slap in facehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/02/09/slapinface/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/02/09/slapinface/#commentsTue, 09 Feb 2016 03:33:49 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=68194This week, a fake pink penis pricked the Prime Minister’s bubble. After failing to consult with Maori over TPP, tensions at Waitangi were running so high, John Key flagged the event. Turns out he dodged a dildo. There had been talk of someone getting a slap in the face but no one, especially Steven Joyce as it transpired, could have foreseen the rubber cockslap in the face that was about to take the world by storm.

Just when the country should be basking in the afterglow of signing the TPP, Josie Butler took the matter into her own hands and flung a rubber sex toy and herself into world political protest history.

Here is a representative selection of world headlines: Steven Joyce to go down in history as ‘Dildo Baggins’. New Zealand politician hit in face with sex toy by protestor. Flying penis slaps-down NZ MP Steven Joyce in Trans Pacific Partnership protest. This NZ politician was just hit by a pink fake penis. World reaction to Joyce’s stiff opposition. WATCH: Unbelievable moment politician gets smacked in the face with sex toy. The serious reason a New Zealand politician had a sex toy thrown at his face. Steven Joyce and #dildogate: Internet goes into overdrive. Flying Pink Dildo Hits Politician In The Face During Presser. TPP protester boldly chucks dildo at Steven Joyce at Waitangi. Dildo thrown at MP’s mouth for ‘raping sovereignty’. Politician Gets Smacked In The Face By Giant Pink Dildo On Live TV And Takes It Like A Champ. Un ministre reçoit un godemichet dans la tête en pleine interview pour la télé néo-zélandaise. Minister bekommt Dildo ins Gesicht geworfen. A véleménynyilvánítás új módja? Vibrátorral dobták arcon a minisztert.

The coverage was extensive and hilarious with perhaps the New York Post’s vivid retelling the most lurid: “New Zealanders have a unique way with expressing themselves through protest: This time, it features an economic development minister — and a flying dildo. … It slapped against his lips and bounced off a nearby reporter’s breasts — before falling limply at their feet…The Minister took it on the chin — before making a quick withdrawal. Social media immediately erupted into a frenzy of witty quips. #dildogate and Steven Joyce surged into the top trends. When asked if this was a first for him, Joyce began: “Yes, it would be fair to say, under any circumstances …”He then quipped: “It would be unfortunate for being known for this incident.” Too late.”

Was it a good look for the nation on its national day? Of course, I could be biased but I don’t remember a single piece condemning the protester or New Zealand. If anything, there was more sneaking admiration than condemnation. As one American commentator wrote for Addictinginfo.org, “George W. Bush was famously attacked with flying shoes. So was Hillary Clinton. William Kristol was hit in the face with a cream pie. Last month, Donald Trump barely escaped being hit with tomatoes. The takeaway? American projectiles are lame. In order to see how it’s really done, we have to travel by video to New Zealand where Minister Steven Joyce was hit in the face this week with a flying rubber dildo hurled by a protester”.

The original, unique and innovative nature of the protest generated the wit and tweets of wags across the world and the protestor’s aim won wide praise and respect. More importantly, her words were heard and reported alongside the image: “That’s for raping our sovereignty.”

Only one person on the planet didn’t see the funny side. AS TVNZ reported, John Key said the ” ‘juvenile’ sex toy throw (is) not a great look for New Zealand” He was “appalled that people around the world have seen images of a sex toy being thrown at a senior New Zealand politician attending Celebrations for our national day. The Prime Minister said the sex toy thrown at Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce yesterday was “crude and basic” behaviour at what is essentially a family occasion. “That’s the image that’s now gone worldwide … it isn’t the right image for New Zealand”.

Of course, John Key knows something about great looks for New Zealand. His own juvenile antics and inappropriate actions have hit the global headlines with a disturbing regularity. Surely you remember “John Key’s ‘prison rape’ stunt goes international. New Zealand prime minister John Key criticised for ‘rape joke’ stunt. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key slammed after taking part in ‘prison rape joke’ stunt on live radio using a bar of soap. New Zealand PM John Key under fire for participating in ‘prison rape’ radio joke. John Oliver – John Key the Ponytail Puller. #PonyTailGate: People post awkward pictures of NZ Prime Minister John Key touching girls’ ponytails on social media. New Zealand’s ponytail-pulling PM gets a dressing down on Twitter. John Oliver thinks John Key’s ‘wees’ interview is amazing.”

After his ‘family-friendly’ prison rape jokes and admission to shower-pissing, it was impossible for the PM to take the moral high ground. Worse, when the rest of the world (even, to his great good credit, Steven Joyce) could see the funny side, he came across as a humourless hypocrite. On New Zealand’s national day, as the world joined with us to celebrate a little harmless rubber sex toy humour at a pompous politician’s expense, he alone, lemon-lipped, secreted in some bunker under Eden Park, berated his country. His was the only bad review. He talked his country down. On its national day. For many, that was not a great look New Zealand.

It was his second public appearance that many thought was not a great look for New Zealand. At the TPP signing, the PM wore a lapel pin featuring the red, black and blue flag of John Keyland. Meanwhile, outside on the streets, many hundreds, perhaps thousands waved or wore the current flag of New Zealand. There were no reports of any sightings of the John Keyland flag. Not a single solitary sighting. Not one. None. Nada. Nil. Nought. Zip. Zero. Zilch. As David Fisher in the NZ Herald reported, there “wasn’t a single Kyle Lockwood flag to be seen. Above the crowds protesting the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement were plenty of the current New Zealand flag, the tino rangatiratanga, United Tribes flag and the Mana Party banners. But not a single fern on black, blue or red.” But why should there be? New Zealand and John Keyland are two different places. One is real and the other imaginary. One has a long history of standing up for what it believes and the other a short history of standing up for….standing up for….well, let’s just leave it at a short history.

In the Bay of Plenty Times, Rosie Dawson-Hewes thought “Key’s fern flag pin at TPP signing insensitive.” She wrote “This week, Mr Key stood in front of the world as New Zealand’s representative. He was representing you and me on that stage. Except his insistence on wearing a flag, that hasn’t been selected by me or you, meant he didn’t represent us at all.”

That has been the emerging narrative of TPP: John Key doesn’t represent us at all. That was certainly the message of the protests that shut down central Auckland for five hours. That was the message of the massive march down Queen Street and back up to Federal Street.

According to Mohsin Siddiqui in an article for The Vineyard Saker, that day “was a good day to be out and about in Auckland. A bouquet of human values was on display that is usually confined to that, overtly distorted, place called ‘personal space’ in this ever shrinking public space. The protests in Auckland were anticipated by the vast majority of the population in this truly unique Island in the Pacific. There is an almost electrifying blend of people from all walks of life who came out to voice their dissent. To their credit the people were 100% peaceful with their protest and civil disobedience. Men, women, children and the elderly marched in solidarity cheerful, hopeful and dignified as their rights were being signed away at a casino. The government decided to sign a fundamentally undemocratic treaty in the one place they could. The policemen kept the peace and somewhere in their stares into the abyss one could see them struggling to contain their own outrage at this farce. Most policemen were calm, friendly and jovial.”

There were no arrests. It was 100% peaceful. A bouquet of human values. An almost electrifying blend of people from all walks of life.

Of course, some, like the PM, didn’t see it that way. Heather du Plessis-Allan was infuriated: “The opposition to the TPP was ugly. Worse than that, it backfired. At first, the crowds of thousands walking Auckland’s streets in protest were impressive. Until you talked to them. Too many of them didn’t even know why they were protesting. But what TPP-haters have done is drive the thousands of ordinary Kiwis who don’t really understand the deal and its implications straight into the arms of the TPP fan-boys and girls. Whose argument are you more likely to believe: the guy who can relay the solitary blog post he’s read on how great the TPP is, or the guy lying in the middle of the road clutching a molotov cocktail because he’s angry about something vaguely to do with the price of medicine?”

What? Did anyone see a guy lying in the middle of the road clutching a molotov cocktail? I’ve read a lot of crap of late but this desperate cant took the cake. Journalists (and here I use the term in its widest sense) should take care to report what happened. Not what could have happened. Or, in the case of the guy lying in the middle of the road clutching a molotov cocktail, what didn’t happen at all. This was ugly, Heather. Inaccurate, inflammatory and just plain ugly. Perhaps you should go back to ordering firearms online and let those who oppose this corporate coup get on with practising their right to peaceful protest.

But before you do, ponder Heather the following and ask yourself whose argument are you more likely to believe: John Key or Nobel Laureate Economist Joseph Stiglitz. John Key or Senator Elizabeth Warren. John Key or Rod Oram. John Key or Rob O’Neill. For Stuff, he wrote ‘On the TPPA, words are cheap’ : “In signing last week, New Zealand formally abandoned its bottom-line on dairy access. As former trade minister and TPPA champion Tim Groser (now NZ Ambassador to Washington) warned in October, we swallowed some dead rats. We swallowed more than we expected. There are economic benefits to the agreement but they are tiny, even according to official modelling. Here’s a fact: the TPPA is a disappointment, an opportunity lost, a setback rather than a victory in New Zealand’s long fight for access to major dairy markets in the US and Japan. That should not be a controversial statement. It’s obvious and it’s true. We have little to celebrate.”

So, in spite of the hoo-ha, with TPP, we have nothing to celebrate. John Key wanted to negotiate it in secret and have it signed sight unseen. Failing to consult with Maori demonstrated a disrespect that will not be forgotten. By failing to be transparent about the treaty’s contents, by promoting only its margin of error benefits and flat-out denying its proven and profound downsides, by wearing a non-New Zealand flag at the ceremony, by running down his country on its national day, the lone voice, he revealed himself as a man who does not represent us at all.

This week, a fake pink penis pricked the Prime Minister’s bubble. Perhaps next time he will be more careful when trying to ram a cock and balls corporate coup down the throats of a fiercely independent and freedom loving nation.

The late Paul Newman remains a great hero for me, on and off screen. I admired his acting, applauded his philanthropy and to this day, am inspired by his activism. Here he is at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (another hero, Martin Luther KIng is about to give his I Have Dream speech).

When I take to the streets on 4 February to exercise my right to peaceful protest, I too will be marching for Jobs and Freedom. I will be marching for our civil rights: that our vote counts, irrespective of our wealth or race or religion and that we are all subject to equal treatment under the law. I will be marching for our human rights: to find work that pays a living wage to support our families, to breath clean air, to drink clean water, and to have access to affordable healthcare and education.

The TPP’s impact on jobs and freedom in this country will be significant and irrevocable. Back in America in 1963, the issue was white Americans had rights and freedoms not available to black Americans because of the colour of their skin. Under the TPP, because of the content of their wallets, foreign investors will have rights and freedoms not available to ordinary New Zealanders.Then, as now, everyone’s vote should count and the rule of law should apply equally and to all. These are the foundation stones of our democracy.

So on 4 February, I look forward to participating in one of the greatest peaceful protests this country will have ever seen. Were he alive today, I like to think Paul would be doing the same.

This week, the world mourned the passing of one the greatest artists of our era. David Bowie, masterpiece of sound, vision, fashion and fame, turned 69, released a new album, appeared across the internet looking a million dollars in a dark suit and hat (no socks: ever stylish) and then…and then…he was dead. Major Tom. The Thin White Duke. Ziggy Stardust. Dead.

How I wished it was a hoax. But no. It was The Guardian website I was reading, reporting confirmation from Bowie’s son. Nearly a week on, it’s still hard to comprehend. He moved through time and space with such otherworldly grace that loving him was like loving the alien. Because he seemed immortal, his mortality shocked. It wasn’t that he died young like Elvis or Lennon. It was that he…well…died at all. Planet Earth was blue with tears and the international outpouring of grief revealed a scale of honour and respect few can inspire.

Of course, that didn’t stop them trying. Like this headline from the NZ Herald: “Editorial: TPP signing an honour, let’s respect it”. After flat out local denials, the (Chilean) Government announced that the Trans Pacific Partnership will be signed in Auckland on 4 February. It seems we are “about to have the honour of hosting the formal signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement by trade ministers from 12 nations of the Pacific rim. And it is an honour. This is the most comprehensive and far-sighted economic agreement the world has seen in our lifetime, possibly of all time.”

The Herald concedes “it is too much to hope any fears now assuaged will reduce the scale of protest at the signing. But it should not be too much to ask that those philosophically opposed to free trade respect the views of those who disagree with them, and let this country host the occasion with dignity and pride”.

A couple of days later in the same paper, John Key’s biographer John Roughan did his best to assuage the fearsome, whose “ only remaining concern may be investors’ rights to sue for compensation in independent international tribunals if a government’s action unreasonably reduces the value of an investment. But that is not new, disputes tribunals were part of post-war international trade rules, and the principle is perfectly reasonable. It is unlikely any government New Zealanders would elect, whether led by National or Labour, would need to be taken to a tribunal. They would expect to compensate an investor for a policy change the investor could not reasonably have foreseen. I don’t know what kind of government protesters have in mind when they call the TPP’s dispute provisions a threat to “democracy”.

How could it be that the most comprehensive, far-sighted economic agreement the world has ever seen pose a threat to democracy? Here’s my take and I’d be interested to hear where I’m going wrong:

If you are an investor under TPP, you have new, secretly negotiated, supra-legal, far-reaching, irreversible, unappealable, unlimited RIGHTS to protect your investment from a government if it acts against your financial interests, including the right to sue for compensation for potential (not just actual) loss of earnings.

If you are NOT an investor under TPP, you have new, secretly negotiated, supra-legal, far-reaching, irreversible, unappealable, unlimited LIABILITIES to recompense investors if your government acts against their financial interests, including exposure to be sued for compensation for potential (not just actual) loss of earnings.

The issue then is (and this for you John Roughan), is it is a function of democracy to provide a two-track judicial system: one for investors and one for non-investors, which provides unlimited irreversible, unappealable rights for one side and unlimited irreversible, unappealable liabilities for the other?

In short, do you believe investor rights trump human rights? If you think they do, if you think this proposition is reasonable, you should support TPP. If you think they don’t, if you think this proposition is treasonable, you should oppose TPP. So far, I’m sold on the latter proposition.

And it’s not just me. On 10 January in The Guardian, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz expressed his hopes that 2016 would be a better year for trade agreements – and “the death of TPP”, which he described as the worst trade agreement in decades (let’s face it, Tim Groser was our negotiator).

According to Stiglitz, “the problem is not so much with the agreement’s trade provisions, but with the “investment” chapter, which severely constrains environmental, health, and safety regulation, and even financial regulations with significant macroeconomic impacts. In particular, the chapter gives foreign investors the right to sue governments in private international tribunals when they believe government regulations contravene the TPP’s terms (inscribed on more than 6,000 pages)”. He continues: “Obama has sought to perpetuate business as usual, whereby the rules governing global trade and investment are written by US corporations for US corporations. This should be unacceptable to anyone committed to democratic principles.”

With TPP, America sets the rules. In his final State of the Union Address this week, Obama said it himself: “With TPP, China does not set the rules in that region; we do.” Sound like a partnership to you?

Stiglitz concludes that” those seeking closer economic integration have a special responsibility to be strong advocates of global governance reforms: if authority over domestic policies is ceded to supranational bodies, then the drafting, implementation, and enforcement of the rules and regulations has to be particularly sensitive to democratic concerns. Unfortunately, that was not always the case in 2015. In 2016, we should hope for the TPP’s defeat and the beginning of a new era of trade agreements that don’t reward the powerful and punish the weak.”

So when John Roughan disingenuously ponders on what kind of government protesters have in mind when they call the TPP’s dispute provisions a threat to democracy, Stiglitz gives us the answer: the kind of government that would “reward the powerful and punish the weak”. Sound familiar?

Respect? Honour? Dignity? Pride? Not for these men who sold the world.

2015 was a bumper year for politics. Here’s my list of of those who made a difference, for better or worse.

1. Politician of the Year: Justin Trudeau: for pulling Canada’s bombers out of Syria, for personally welcoming Syrian refugees to Canada, for creating his county’s first gender-balanced cabinet, for initiating the decriminalization of marijuana, for addressing the past treatment of indigenous people, for reversing Canada’s climate change denials . Beautiful. Bi-lingual. Testament that style and substance are not mutually exclusive. The antidote to ugly poisonous politics. Made me wish NZ was a province of Canada.

2. Kelvin Davis: for speaking truth to power, for actually getting off his arse in Wellington and travelling to Christmas Island to determine the plight of NZ detainees, for relentlessly pursuing and exposing Serco’s scandalous incompetence and fraud. He walks his talk. Made me proud to have voted Labour.

3. Hilary Clinton: for standing by Bill all these years, for making it through 11 hours of congressional interrogation in better shape than her interrogators, living proof that America is not completely full of ignorant, racist bigots. She should be President. She must be President.

4. Winston Peters: for winning Northland, for proving John Key is not invincible, for looking so suave at 70. A charming, street-smart political gadfly in National’s ointment.

5. Marama Davidson: for her courage and compassion, for hitting the ground running, a working mother who actually believes in something. A political superstar in the making.

6. David Seymour: for not being a craven little lickspittle, unlike his predecessor. Can’t abide his politics but hugely admired his decision to decline a place in Key’s cabinet. Very bright. Doesn’t wear a bowtie so already a step up from Peter Dunne.

7. Tony Abbott: for being a dangerous religious fundamentalist. Rightly dumped by his colleagues before he dragged Oz into a Holy War. A Textor/Crosby sloganeer (like Key) now hell-bent on political revenge at the expense of his party and his country. Should be sent to Christmas Island immediately.

8. Donald Trump: for making George W Bush look like Gandhi., for saying in public what ignorant racist bigots have always wanted to say. Personification of The Ugly American. Puts me off the colour orange for life. Should be sent to Christmas Island immediately.

9. John Key: for being an easy, sleazy, smug rich prick who makes fun of those less fortunate, for using his considerable talents for the betterment of the wealthy at the expense of the poor, for being a royal-name-dropping-All-Black-arse-licking-star-fucker (and these are his good points). Makes me ashamed to be a New Zealander. Should be sent to the shower block on Christmas Island immediately.

10. Adolf Hitler: for achieving the remarkable distinction of being compared to ISIS and Donald Trump in the same week, for being the politician behind VW and the inspiration for its outrageous marketing propaganda, for enduring more hilariously inappropriate internet memes than any other living politician. Uncredited set and costume designer for the evil baddies in the latest Star Wars. For having one testicle (that’s still one more than John Key).

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” So said Winston Churchill. This week, the world witnessed the best and worst of a grand old democracy in action. Should Britain bomb ISIS in Syria was the question?

The unexpected star of the marathon debate was the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn. AS John Grace reported in The Guardian: “Syria may not be liberated, but Hilary Benn has been. Freed from the burden of his father’s shadow. Freed from the necessity of toeing a party line. Free to be himself. Free of doubt. Where others – both for and against extending air-strikes on Syria – had spoken with hand-wringing angst of the torment they had suffered in squaring their consciences, Benn knew only moral certainty. The vote to go to war had never been in question. What had been lacking was a leader the House of Commons could unite behind. Now they had their man.”

Here’s what their man had to say: “As a party, we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility, one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road. And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight and all of the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy – the means by which we will make our decision tonight – in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated and it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists were just one part of the international brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It’s why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice and my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion tonight.”

Fascists. Calculated brutality. Superiority. Contempt for values, tolerance, decency and democracy. Denial of human rights and justice. Fascists. Hitler. Mussolini. Franco. Evil.
Benn’s speech, widely lauded as the best of the night, lacks for nothing in moral certainty. Sadly, the issue was not about dropping morals on Syria, it was about dropping bombs. Military certainty was the crux of the matter: would dropping bombs on Syria have any effect? Would it make the world a safer place? Or would it make things worse? Benn was silent on these crucial points. For him, invoking Hitler, Mussolini and Franco was sufficient.

For a leading light of the Left to claim the current crisis in any way resembles the Spanish Civil War or Nazi aggression in WWII applies Godwin’s Law in the most egregious, dark and dangerous way. ISIS has no army, navy or air force. It is not amassing two million troops on an international border. It is not using a nation’s vast industrial complex to make bombs and bullets. It has no Strategic Command and Control Centre, no NORAD, no Wolf’s Lair. There is no Fuhrer huddling in a Bunker in Raqqa. Today, there is no easily defined fascist-nation-state-enemy as Germany or Italy once were. This enemy attacked Paris with 8 suicide assassins. It did not invade France with an army of occupation.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” Reductio ad Hitlerum. By comparing ISIS to Hitler, Benn proves he does not know his enemy.

Surprisingly, some of the most compelling and coherent arguments against the motion came from David Cameron’s own party.

Conservative MP John Baron: “The short-term effect of British airstrikes will be marginal. But as we intervene more, we become more responsible for the events on the ground and lay ourselves open to the unintended consequences of the fog of war. Without a comprehensive strategy, airstrikes will simply reinforce the west’s long-term failure in the region generally, at a time when there are already too many aircraft chasing too few targets. And I suggest, just as in previous ill-advised western interventions, a strong pattern emerges. Time and time again the executive makes a convincing case, often with the support of intelligence sources, and time and time again it turns out to be wrong. We have stood at this very point before. We should have no excuse for repeating our errors and setting out on the same tragic, misguided path once more.”

Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie: “The ruling out of western ground forces is very significant. It tells us that, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the west appears to lack the will, and perhaps the military strength, to commit the resources that might be needed to construct a new order from the shaken kaleidoscope of Syria. As in Libya, it would be relatively easy to remove a brutal dictator from the air, and perhaps also to suppress Isil, but it would be extremely difficult to construct a regime more favourable to our long-term interests. We do not need to look into a crystal ball to see that; we can read the book. The result of over a decade of intervention in the Middle East has been not the creation of a regional order more attuned to western values and interests, but the destruction of an existing order of dictatorships that, however odious, was at least effective in supressing the sectarian conflicts and resulting terrorism that have taken root in the middle east. Regime change in Iraq brought anarchy and terrible suffering. It has also made us less safe. Above all, it has created the conditions for the growth of militant extremism. We should be under no illusions: today’s vote is not a small step. Once we have deployed military forces in Syria, we will be militarily, politically and morally deeply engaged in that country, and probably for many years to come.. That is why the government’s description of the extension of bombing to Syria as merely an extension of what we were already doing in Iraq is misplaced. We simply have not heard enough from the government about exactly what the reconstruction will mean. The timing of this vote has everything to do with the opportunity to secure a majority provided by the shocking attacks in Paris. Everybody feels a bond with the French, but an emotional reflex is not enough. Military action might be effective at some point, but military action without a political strategy is folly. We have yet to hear that strategy, so I cannot support the government’s motion tonight.”

Conservative MP Dr Julian Lewis : “Honourable members are being asked to back airstrikes against Daesh to show solidarity with our French and American friends, yet a gesture of solidarity – however sincerely meant – can’t somehow be a substitute for hard-headed strategy. Indeed, the fact that the British government wanted to bomb first one side and then the other in the same civil war in such a short space of time illustrates to my mind a vacuum at the heart of our strategy. At least we are now targeting our deadly Islamist enemies rather than trying to bring down yet another dictator with the same likely results as in Iraq and in Libya.”

In the House of Lords, even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, warned against doing “the right thing in such a wrong way that it becomes the wrong thing”: “The just war criteria have, to my mind, been met. But while they are necessary, they are not by themselves sufficient, in action at this time… Our bombing action plays into the expectation of Isil and other jihadist groups in the region, springing from their apocalyptic theology. The totality of our actions must subvert that false narrative because by itself it will not work. If we act only against Isil globally and only in the way proposed so far we will strengthen their resolve, increase their recruitment and encourage their sympathisers. Without a far more comprehensive approach we confirm their dreadful belief that what they are doing is the will of God.”

David Cameron assured there were “around 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters who do not belong to extremist groups and with whom we can coordinate attacks on Daesh. The House will appreciate there are some limits on what I can say about these groups, not least that I can’t risk the safety of these courageous people who are being targeted daily by the regime, or by Daesh, or by both. But I know that this is an area of great interest and concern for the House, so let me try and say a little more. The 70,000 is an estimate from [the] independent joint intelligence committee based on a detailed analysis updated on a daily basis and drawing on a wide range of open source and intelligence. Of these 70,000, the majority are from the Free Syrian Army. Alongside the 70,000, there are some 20,000 Kurdish fighters with whom we can also work. I am not arguing – and this is a crucial point – that all of these 70,000 are ideal partners. Some though left the Syrian army because of Assad’s brutality and they clearly can play a role in the future of Syria and that is actually a view that is taken by the Russians as well, who are prepared to talk with these people.”

A British Prime Minister cites military intelligence as grounds for military action. Sound familiar? Does anyone truly, madly, deeply believe there are 70 000 Syrian opposition fighters who will join the West in its fight against ISIS? Or are such claims, today as in 2003, as ever, the vacuum at the heart of our strategy?

Having slurred those opposed to bombing as ‘terrorist sympathisers’, David Cameron sent out a victory tweet: “I believe the House has taken the right decision to keep the UK safe – military action in Syria as one part of a broader strategy.” Orwell would be proud.

This week, the least important issue confronting New Zealand right now collided graphically and grimly with the most important issue facing New Zealand.

Sensing a looming personal PR catastrophe, Prime Minister John Key attempted to resuscitate his own fame fantasies by flagging a dead All Black. In a testy interview (with Paul Henry!), Key claimed the Irish Examiner’s use of a fern on its front page to remember Jonah Lomu shows it is the best symbol for New Zealand: “Here’s the silver fern front page with one frond coming off like a tear with Jonah Lomu and his years. Amazingly powerful. That’s New Zealand. Where was our flag? No where. Around the world, everywhere you go, people know the silver fern.”

In his desperation, the PM missed two points. When the rest of us saw the silver fern front page with one frond coming off like a tear, the immediate, poignant and poetic inference was that the world was mourning the passing of a great All Black. Everyone on the planet, except Key, connected the symbol with the All Blacks. Indeed, in this sad context, the “amazingly powerful” use of the fern showed it was the best symbol…. for the All Blacks. No one but Key made the torturous, tasteless, self-serving leap in logic that proved it was the best symbol for New Zealand. In their grief at the loss of a legend, so young, no one, no one but Key, was even vaguely contemplating the least important issue confronting New Zealand right now: his ill-conceived, ill-fated, inorganic vanity project to change the flag. It was the latest and lowest attempt by the PM to purloin All Black icons and iconography for political purpose. In his cloud of narcissism, he missed the point proved by the Irish Examiner cover and clear to the world: the silver fern is an “amazingly powerful” symbol. For the All Blacks. Period.

The second point missed by the Prime Minister relates to the most important issue facing New Zealand. “Where was our flag? No where.” he trumpeted to Paul Henry. As is (most) often the case with Key, the statement is not true. Where was our flag? As it transpired, it was ‘not nowhere’. It was far from nowhere. It was somewhere. Somewhere very specific. Somewhere very sobering. John Key should have remembered where it was because, earlier this year, unmandated by the parliament or the people, he planted it there: next to fifty nine other flags representing the coalition of countries at war with ISIS.

“New Zealand is a country that stands up for its values.” he told Parliament. “We stand up for what’s right. We have an obligation to support stability and the rule of law internationally. We do not shy away from taking our share of the burden when the international rules-based system is threatened. We have carved out our own independent foreign policy over decades and we take pride in it. New Zealand did not shy away from its responsibilities when the rule of law was under threat.”

After the tragedy unfolded in Paris, you would think that the man who chided Andrew Little to “Get some guts!” would remember “where our flag was”. Around the world, everywhere you go, people may know the silver fern. But what became clear this week, to everyone but the PM it would seem, in a violent, vengeful part of the world, we are identified by our current flag.

At this most fragile time in world affairs, with Russia and Turkey standing eyeball to eyeball, with so much at stake and events poised to spiral out of control, our flag once more signifies our commitment to war, the most important issue that faces New Zealand.

For there can be no doubt that these are very dangerous times. As dangerous as the barbarity meted out that night in Paris is the world’s reaction to it. As mentioned, relations between Turkey and Russia are chilling, already an unintended consequence of two country’s resolve not to “shy away” from taking a “share of the burden”. Perhaps even more chilling are the words coming out of another country “that stands up for its values.” Next year, the United States will elect a new President. In his quest for the job, billionaire property developer and reality vision host Donald Trump has, like our own PM, wasted no time exploiting war for political advantage.

As Molly Ball reports in The Atlantic “Four months into his crazed foray into presidential politics, Trump is still winning this thing. And what could once be dismissed as a larkish piece of political performance art has seemingly turned into something darker. Pundits, even conservative ones, say that Trump resembles a fascist. The recent terrorist attacks in Paris, which some hoped would expose Trump’s shallowness, have instead strengthened him by intensifying people’s anger and fear. Trump has falsely claimed that thousands of Muslims cheered the 9/11 attacks from rooftops in New Jersey; he has declined to rule out a national database of Muslims. The other day, a reporter asked Trump if the things he was proposing weren’t just like what the Nazis did to the Jews. Trump replied, “You tell me.”

In the Business Insider, Pamela Engel quotes Trump: “ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because they have certain oil camps, certain areas of oil that they took away. They have some in Syria, some in Iraq. I would bomb the shit out of ’em. I would just bomb those suckers. That’s right. I’d blow up the pipes. … I’d blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left. And you know what, you’ll get Exxon to come in there and in two months, you ever see these guys, how good they are, the great oil companies? They’ll rebuild that sucker, brand new — it’ll be beautiful.”

Trump’s campaign slogan is “Make America great again.” Abraham Lincoln made America great. So did Franklin Roosevelt. John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King made America great. Unlike these great Americans, who died in service of their country, Donald Trump is making America hate again. At this time in history, to falsely claim that thousands of Muslims cheered the 9/11 attacks from rooftops in New Jersey is racist, fascist and wrong.

In 2003, an ugly American invaded Iraq. Twelve years later, another ugly American vows to “bomb the shit out ‘em”. More than any other Prime Minister, John Key has aligned New Zealand with the United States. If Trump becomes President, and he might, what shall we do? What shall we do? Get some guts?

I would like to finish on a sunnier note. If Donald Trump is the ugly American, Justin Trudeau is the beautiful Canadian. Calm and compassionate, he offers light not heat and serves as a (male) model to us all. “Resettling refugees is a proud and important part of Canada’s humanitarian tradition. It reflects our commitment to Canadians and it demonstrates to the world that we have a shared responsibility to help people who are displaced and fleeing persecution. Protecting the safety, security, and health of Canadians and refugees is a key factor in guiding the Government of Canada’s plan to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees as quickly as possible – while also taking the time to do it right.”

As politicians around the world rushed to prove their machismo by fanning the flames of war and slamming the doors on Syrian refugees, Trudeau offered them, the people of Canada and the world, a ray of hope. God knows, we need it.

Friday, 13th March. Unlucky for some. The PM attempts, from directly in front of her, to reach around in search of her hair, as he walks by. She puts her hand out in front of her, and says “No! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” wagging a finger at him. He reluctantly backs away. The PM says to the manager “She really doesn’t like me pulling her ponytail?” who responds “Well …no!” He then asks for her name and later, as he passes upon leaving, he speaks her name. “Just that one word”.

Thursday, 26 March. The PM is once again at the cafe. When it comes time for him to leave, he approaches her, raising his hands high, making scary, suspense sound effects, like the music from the movie Jaws and gesturing as if to reach behind her. Mrs Key tells him to “leave the poor girl alone”. She asks “is it self defence, with your security here, if I have to physically stop you from touching me?” The PM counters with a smile, “Defence against what?” As he motions to leave, she turns towards the computer, and he once again pulls her hair. She tells him “Please STOP or I will actually hit you soon!”.

Later, the PM tells Patrick Gower “I have to take responsibility for my own actions. I completely misread the situation, clearly otherwise it you know wouldn’t have happened. I just didn’t see it for what it was.”

Well, what was it?

According to Marilyn Waring on National Radio it was “unlawful behaviour under section 62 of the Human Rights Act. I’m tired of it being treated as anything but illegal. The Prime Minister is a sexual harasser and he has engaged in illegal activity. The law doesn’t depend on anyone’s political affiliation. Illegal activity is illegal activity. This is illegal.”

Under section 62, “it shall be unlawful for any person by the use of language (whether written or spoken) of a sexual nature, or of visual material of a sexual nature, or by physical behaviour of a sexual nature, to subject any other person to behaviour that is unwelcome or offensive to that person (whether or not that is conveyed to the first-mentioned person); and is either repeated, or of such a significant nature, that it has a detrimental effect on that person.”

The undisputed facts describe behaviour that was unwelcome, offensive, repeated and detrimental. He touched her at work, repeatedly and against her will, embarrassing his wife who had to ask him to “Leave the poor girl alone”.

Was there spoken language or physical behaviour of a sexual nature?

“As he rounded the corner behind me he commented “that’s a very tantalising ponytail”. The dictionary defines ‘tantalising’ as “exciting the senses or desires of (someone). Eg “she still tantalised him”. Language of a sexual nature?

He made “scary, suspense sound effects, like the music from the movie Jaws.” We all know the reference. The iconic two-note main theme for Jaws, which composer John Williams said was meant to represent the shark as an “unstoppable force” of “mindless and instinctive attacks”. In his essay in Deep Focus Reviews, Brian Eggert writes “Take the persistent theory of the shark as a sexual predator and serial killer. In this, Spielberg places us in the shark’s perspective using underwater POV shots of bikini bodies and slender legs treading water. Not unlike the masked psychopath in the opening of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1979), the killer watches and follows its prey, and then attacks with prolonged jabs, as if to savor the moment. Likewise, in the first sequence of Jaws, a clear inspiration for Carpenter, our underwater killer does not devour the bohemian Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) in one quick chomp, but instead tortures her with agonizing bites to heighten her fear and its own enjoyment.” Key identifies himself: a Great White Shark, the “unstoppable” apex predator, closing in on his female prey. Behaviour of a sexual nature?

Gower asks “when you accept that you got it wrong, do you accept that you misused your power?” Key replies “No because I didn’t intend to do that.” Gower suggests that “the context really is about power. You’re the Prime Minister. She’s someone working in her job.” Key responds “Yes I understand that’s some people’s argument. There’s a counter argument… for that and I think yeah look by nature I’m a pretty casual person, and I do kid around and have a bit of fun, and I think one of the things that look you know that, look the majority of staff there have enjoyed is the fact that……the opposite, rather than the power sort of thing and me being a bit stuck up I’ve been mucking around and having a bit of fun, now you know ok look in the end I got that wrong and I have to accept that.”

Is the Prime Minister to be judged by his intentions? Or by what he actually said and did? Is he saying “Because I didn’t mean it, it doesn’t matter.”? Is that the way the law works?

Many words have been used to describe what he did including silly, stupid, school-boyish, weird, odd, egregious, bizarre, unbecoming, creepy and grotesque. But who amongst us has not already thought of the PM in those terms. The word that counts here, the inescapable, unavoidable, fatal-to-a-political-career word, is the word Marilyn Waring uttered on National Radio: unlawful. He might be our most casual Prime Minister but he remains the country’s chief lawmaker and, as such, is bound to abide by the law. Unlike Len Brown, the line he crossed is not moral but legal.

In the final analysis, there is no ‘counter-argument’ to consent. No means no. No amount of context, kidding or casual banter can ever transform “No! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” to “Yes! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!” She said “No”. And still, he touched her. Two bottles of wine won’t cut it. He should have listened to the woman if not his wife and stopped. Too late now, Mr Key.

Summer is over, March is here. For some, (Tony Abbott, this means you) the Ides of March have come. For others (John Key, this means you), this war heralds the end of the golden weather and a winter of unprecedented discontent.

On the box this morning, the PM outlined what could only be called a ‘kill and run’ strategy in Iraq.

First, any response that didn’t involve killing was not an option. Humanitarian aid may help the Iraqis but it won’t help our friends and killing is the currency of our club membership. So humanitarian aid is out. Second, everyone accepts that military intervention never works. In fact, all the evidence suggests it makes matters worse. For this reason, the PM has come up with a plan that limits NewZealand contribution to making matters worse. We will send only a tiny contingent to assist with the killing and we will send them for only two years. So that’s the plan: stay onside with our friends by sending only a very tiny force to help with the killing for only two very short years. And then we’re out of there. Mission Accomplished. What could possibly go wrong?

Put another way, the PM accepts that Iraq is a piranha pool. And we all know trying to kill piranhas by jumping in their pool has never worked. But because our friends are jumping in again, we are obliged to jump in too. But rest assured, only a tiny few will be jumping in and those few will only be exposed to the piranhas for two years. After two years, we get out of the pool and come home. Mission Accomplished. What could possibly go wrong?

Put another way, the PM has committed New Zealand to a war George Bush started with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men but did not win. Having lost then, we sign up to the same losing strategy and join the same unwinnable war but, and this is the genius of John Key, only for two years and only with a tiny military contingent. Mission Accomplished. What could possibly go wrong?

Does it matter? In the NZ Herald, Mike Hosking said it was a ‘brave and honourable’ call. “History shows us that former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was fully expecting to be hailed a hero and a liberator when he rolled into Baghdad. Recent history shows Chuck Hagel, one of Rumsfeld’s successors, got the shock of his life at just how sophisticated, ruthless and well-financed the current enemy are. They defined the conflict, they told us how it was all going to unfold, and look what happened. Look what’s still happening. But through it all, despite it all, we must play our part. It is the right, honourable and only thing to do.”

“Look what happened. Look what’s still happening”. Hosking has no sense of cause and effect. For him, ignoring facts and history is “the right, honourable and only thing to do” What part of ‘warmongering propaganda leading to devastation and calamity’ does he not understand to write such rubbish? Though we won a seat on the UN Security Council, we have squandered that opportunity to assist the innocent in Iraq and forge a lasting peace and have instead taken sides in a civil war. Instead of addressing the complex sectarian causes behind the conflict, we are embroiled in its symptomatic bloodshed. Perversely, fatally, we have opted for the only response guaranteed to fail: another military engagement in Iraq, a tiny contribution of blunt force, some useless little lethal drops for this bucket of blood. How brave or honourable is this plan with no prospect of peace for them and every risk of war for us? Does that sound brave and honorable? Doesn’t that sound like the worst of all possible worlds: no prospect of peace: every risk of war? War in Iraq, Mike! Unsanctioned by the United Nations or even our own parliament. Does that sound brave and honorable? War, declared with all the courage and moral clarity required to risk the lives of other people’s children and spend their money.

In the NZ Herald, Fran O’Sullivan writes that ‘John Key is doing the right thing in Iraq.’ Painting him as “a craven servant of the White House – a United States lapdog happy to send New Zealand troops into harm’s way to serve America’s Middle East interests” is “an outrageously naive and insulting allegation” that will ” leave John Key smarting”. Fran makes no mention of the fact that the PM’s decision will leave a lot of people dead. She berates the New Zealand body politic – and journalists – for not rising above “the reflexive anti-Americanism that remains embedded here despite successive bi-partisan measures by Helen Clark’s and Key’s governments to normalise relations with Washington and look at the wider picture before casting their stones.” For Fran, it seems the stone casting has already reached these shores. What is outrageous and insulting is that she is the one who refuses to look at the wider picture. We were anti-America’s last invasion of Iraq and, as history has proved, rightly so. The wider picture, Fran, shows that John Key is doing the wrong thing in Iraq.

A defining act is concealed a meaningless gesture. Those few troops represent a necessary statement to old friends and a never-to-be-forgotten introduction to new enemies. Under this Prime Minister, New Zealand stands for war not peace. He sends us to Iraq to stand beside our friends and help out with the killing’. How brave and honourable is that, Mr Hosking? How brave and honourable is that?

Call me gutless, but I agree with Russel Norman: “When it comes to Western military interventions in Iraq, New Zealand and the world has been there. We have done that. It did not work. It was a mess. If we want to find lasting peace in the Middle East, we need to be a voice of justice. We need to be a voice for human rights and democracy. This means we have to have the courage of our convictions, to tell the head of the club, the great nation of the United States of America, that it is time to wean ourselves off cheap oil and it is time to support genuine peace, democracy, and human rights in the Middle East.”

Call me gutless, but I agree with John Armstrong: John Key is not winning the debate: “The essential problem is with the training role. No one has any confidence it will make even a skerrick of difference to what ultimately happens in Iraq. If that is the case, the deployment becomes nothing more than a manufactured exercise in flag-waving designed to satisfy the Americans, rather than dealing to Isis. Surely the days when New Zealand was so compliant and so submissive to Washington’s wishes are long over. But it seems not.”

Declaring this country a nuclear-free zone was a brave and honorable call. Glibly and without purpose or principle, John Key has let the war genie out of the bottle. Like Dean Barker, I’m gutted.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/03/02/the-gutless-and-the-gutted/feed/45Corruption and the SkyCity Convention Centre Deal? Do we need a Public Inquiry?https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/23/corruption-and-the-skycity-convention-centre-deal-do-we-need-a-public-inquiry/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/02/23/corruption-and-the-skycity-convention-centre-deal-do-we-need-a-public-inquiry/#commentsSun, 22 Feb 2015 19:36:02 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=55853

In this last piece from July 2013, Andrea Vance reports that “In a briefing paper to cabinet ministers, economic development ministry officials note that Treasury was “not convinced by the cost benefit analysis” for the centre. It said New Zealand already attracts a “disproportionate share” of the convention centre market. International arrivals for conferences have plateaued since 2005 and international research showed a low net public benefit of conference centres. “These considerations lead Treasury to doubt that an expanded conference centre in Auckland will attract significantly more international conference attendees.”The paper also laid out Treasury officials’ concerns about gambling.”Public costs will only go to private gain,” it said, once the initial costs of constructing the centre are paid off. “Treasury has strong concerns that private benefits to SkyCity will exceed public benefits to New Zealanders.”

Given this and the extraordinary events of last week, should there be a public inquiry into the Government’s dealings with the Casino giant, the integrity of the original tender process and the role played by the Prime Minister (described in last Saturday’s NZ Herald by Fran O’Sullivan as “shamelessly bypassing good governance procedures”) negotiating a deal that has delivered ‘private benefits to SkyCity that exceed public benefits to New Zealanders’?

If I were Eleanor Catton, I’d write a new book. It would be called ‘Fifty Shades of Free’. In it, a neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry Prime Minister gets his dirty, smelly, well-shagged carpet publically taken to the cleaners by a Casino. Of course, this new book would not win the Man Booker Prize. Because it would be a work of non-fiction.

This week, the Prime Minister felt the thin, sharp blade of public opinion at his throat as he preposterously went in to bat for Sky City and its demand for cost-overrun cash. Although the Casino eventually backed down (if keeping the gambling concessions, the monopoly extension, adding a new hotel to the mix and being given permission to deliver 10% less than was promised to the Crown in the original deal can be called a backdown), the confrontation has been an ugly, credibility-sapping exercise for the PM: a political own-goal, pyrrhic victory and an all-round terrible look.

As reported in the NZ Herald, “Leader of the Opposition Andrew Little said overwhelming opposition to public funding for a convention centre meant the Government had no choice but to back away from its plans. “SkyCity are the ones who have suckered the Government. This is about SkyCity’s bottom line, not the Government’s,” he said in a statement. The Labour leader said the casino’s decision to drop its bid for taxpayer funding had nothing to do with ministers playing hard ball with SkyCity. “It has everything to do with the stitch-up they did with the casino giant from day one.”Mr Little added: “What part of ‘not a cent’ did John Key not understand? He and Steven Joyce dug their own hole. They have attempted to soften the public up for months, now they have been forced to back down.”New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the Government’s performance on the deal had been “rambling, shambling and pitiful”.

On Stuff, Vernon Small had earlier caught the Prime Minister’s true priority and basic bargaining position: “Asked if the Government would re-tender the contract for the convention centre, which SkyCity agreed to build in return for gambling concessions, Key said that would be a bridge the Government would cross when it got to it. “Let’s deal with SkyCity first.” It’s a defining sentence and sentiment for the PM. Before addressing child poverty or sky-rocketing house prices or Auckland’s transport issues or even easing the plight of those people in Christchurch still trying to put their post-quake lives together, “let’s deal with Sky City first” has been his mantra. This week, he spruiked the Casino’s need for tax-payer support and as Andrew Little observed, only universally-negative public polling prevented him from meeting that need.

How we got to this point is again addressed by Vernon Small: “Asked what cost protections there were for the taxpayer in the original deal, Key said there were issues of “what escalation of costs would look like at a certain point when the contract is signed, where that sits, blah, blah, blah”. If the PM is still pondering on why Ms Catton shows no respect, perhaps he could reflect on these words. As a measure of how much the PM respects the electorate, ‘blah, blah, blah’ sums it up really.

As it turned out, there were only least-preferred options for the Prime Minister. Although the Casino yielded, the PM, by his own words, was left shilling eyesores by the seashore. The issue split the Government and united the country. In the NZ Herald, Fran O’Sullivan reported Finance Minister Bill English’s genuine opposition “to the gold-plating of the design specs that have taken place since SkyCity struck its “convention centre for more pokies” deal with Key and Cabinet minister Steven Joyce.” In the same piece, she notes that the Beehive spin was that “John Key craftily wheeled English out to send a message to SkyCity that there are fiscal limits to the Government’s ability to fund the extra. A message that the Prime Minister – who had shamelessly bypassed good governance procedures when he stitched up the bones of the behind scenes “free” deal with SkyCity directors in the first place – was too compromised to deliver himself.” What was that Fran? The PM shamelessly bypassed good governance procedures when he stitched up the bones of the behind scenes “free” deal and was too compromised to deliver messages to Sky City himself? Shamelessly bypassing good governance procedures, stitching up free deals and being compromised to a Casino doesn’t sound crafty. It sounds like grounds for dismissal. Again, if the PM is still pondering on why Ms Catton shows no respect, he could just read Fran O’Sullivan’s column .

Further damning criticism came from the Right. In NBR, Mathew Hooton let rip: “In cabinet papers, the government told itself a big centre “has the potential to deliver considerable economic benefits to New Zealand.” Ministers did not risk consulting the Treasury on this point. It was merely “informed” of what was going on. No cost-benefit analysis was carried out and for very good reason: It was politics and political friendships driving the demand for convention centres, not economics. The procurement process for the Auckland centre was a farce and as close to corruption as we ever see in New Zealand.”

The PM nailed his true colours to this Convention Centre. When it is built, it should bear his name for, like a dirty, smelly, well-shagged carpet, “as close to corruption as we ever see in New Zealand”, it shall be his legacy to us all.

In Davos, he went before the cameras of the world to defend the reputation of Prince Andrew. He promoted Mike Sabin to the Chair of the Law and Order Committee. He extols the virtues of the TPPA. And he is about to commit us to a war in Iraq. Without the jolly German distraction that was Kim Dotcom, the focus of the country lasered in this week on the quality of the Prime Minister’s judgment. His Convention Centre thinking, “rambling, shambling and pitiful”, his “blah, blah, blah”, gives much cause for concern.

For a brief moment, the nations of the world seemed united in a peaceful pursuit. The World Cup finale in Brazil captured the imagination of a global TV audience. Within days, catastrophe exploded into the headlines, sending shards of outrage, shock and grief across the planet as, by bizarre and gruesome coincidence, two storylines of recent world history, civil unrest on Russia’s western border and a Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner collided over the skies of Ukraine.

The wreckage lies in a war zone, as yet unsecured, with most bodies yet to be retrieved. Journalists and camera crews have freely roamed the carnage. With such unprecedented access to a disaster scene, their words and pictures are extraordinary, harrowing to view and horrific to read.

In the New York Times, Sabrina Tavernise’s account, ‘Fallen Bodies, Jet Parts and a Child’s Pink Book’ , is stark and sombre: “Incongruously, given that the plane fell from more than 30,000 feet, many of the bodies strewn about in the smoldering wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were largely intact. A woman in a black sweater lay on her back, blood streaming from her face, her left arm raised as if signaling someone. Another victim, naked except for a black bra, lay on the field, her gray hair mixing with the green grass, one leg broken and her body torn. Many of the victims were still wearing their seatbelts, attached to pieces of the plane. One man, still in his socks but without pants, lay in the field, his right arm placed on his stomach as if in repose. Others had personal belongings nearby. A young man in blue shorts, wearing red Nike sneakers but no pants, lay with his arms and legs splayed outward, an iPhone by his side.”

Brutal. Shocking. Tragic. Historic. But not in a good way.

The extensive and graphic coverage of the disaster pushed all other stories, including Israel’s invasion of Gaza, off the front pages of the world. Same locally with political news. Which might be good thing. For Labour, the latest political poll is historic. But not in a good way.

In the NZ Herald, Audrey Young reports that ‘Labour slumps to 15-year low’. ‘National and John Key more favoured than ever for next government’ read the sub-headline. “Its 26.5 per cent support is a slide of four points since June. With just two months to the election, Labour could slip into the disastrous territory held by National in 2002, when it polled 20.93 per cent in the face of the highly popular Labour Government.”

So how is Labour taking the bad news? In the Sunday Star-Times, Steve Killigan claimed to have the inside story: ‘Skiing Holiday puts Cunliffe on slippery slope.’ The piece reads like a gossip column: “Labour MPS are disgusted by leader David Cunliffe’s skiing holiday just two months before the election and will question his work ethic at a caucus meeting on Tuesday, a senior party insider has told the Sunday Star-Times. As Labour hit a new polling low of just 23.5 per cent in the latest Stuff/Ipsos poll and data suggested those numbers would climb quickly if its leader quit, Cunliffe took a week’s leave to go skiing in Queenstown. That decision has infuriated a significant number of Labour MPs, the insider claimed. “A lot of MPs are really f….. off about it,” he said. “They are all working hard up and down the country, and f…… Cunliffe is on holiday. Guys like [Phil] Goff and [Annette] King and [David] Shearer, these guys really want it badly and they are working like their lives depend on it. And I think they are a little incredulous about what the guy is doing.” The insider said while Prime Minister John Key was also holidaying – in Hawaii – there was a “world of difference” between an incumbent prime minister enjoying 52 per cent support in the polls and an opposition leader trailing nearly 30 points behind. “It sounds a little treasonous, but the guy doesn’t want it badly enough. If he did, he would be working. I think it is disgraceful behaviour, and not the sort of behaviour becoming of a guy who wants to be prime minister.”

As I write, Labour is about to hold an emergency caucus meeting, so who knows? Is this election about to take another unforeseen twist? Stranger things have happened.

Doing his best to keep it a cliff -hanger, Kim Dotcom announced he would reveal all about the Prime Minister at a public meeting five days before the election. Some don’t appreciate his theatrical timing. In the NZ Herald, John Armstrong opined : “Memo Dotcom – Put up or shut up: The time has come for Kim Dotcom to put up or shut up, for this intelligent, canny but highly manipulative individual to front with his yet-to-be-made public disclosures which he boasts will blow John Key out of the water – and though Dotcom does not say it directly, presumably bring a rapid end to Key’s days as Prime Minister. Dotcom must now prove far beyond any reasonable doubt that Key has lied repeatedly when challenged as to when exactly he became aware or was made aware of the former Megaupload mogul’s existence. If Dotcom cannot or will not do that, he should zip it.”

In the same paper, Toby Manhire expressed a similar sentiment in “Dotcom’s delayed bombshell looks like a fizzer’ . “Five days before the election, we are to expect a bombshell. The brilliant, diabolical Mr Dotcom will stage an event at the Auckland Town Hall, at which he will produce evidence that his arch-nemesis, Mr John Key, did, after all, know about him before the eve of the famous testosterone-fuelled raid on chez Dotcom in January 2012. Dotcom will rise slowly to the stage through a smoke-filled trapdoor, wearing a purple velvet gown over a black zip-up top, gently stroking a Maui dolphin. The crowd will rise to its feet, gasping, as the Prime Minister is dragged into the spotlight by a bevy of burlesque dancers over a looped soundtrack of “why are you turning red, Prime Minister?”.

In Manhire’s view, “for all the theatrical appeal, it is unreasonable and wrong for Dotcom to withhold this supposed evidence for a climactic campaign spectacular. A big reveal in the final week of the campaign doesn’t only lend weight to perceptions the internet-Mana hydra is a Dotcom plaything, that the political party and the Dotcom defence are two sides of the same bitcoin. It also denies New Zealanders information they deserve to know. If Dotcom can prove that the Prime Minister has bare-faced lied, over and over, the democratic imperative is that he do so now. If Key is not fit for office on September 15, then he is not fit for office today. Dotcom should cut to the chase. Otherwise, the assumption has to be that the great Dotcom bombshell is an enormous political bluff.”

“If Key is not fit for office on September 15, then he is not fit for office today.” Few could argue with that.

With the clock ticking down to the election, the headlines this week were filled with tidbits that were off-message, off-side and off-colour. The Left struggled with credibility issues whilst the Right wrestled with questions of competence. Meanwhile, in the most disturbing and distasteful distraction of the week, an international scandal groped its way into the local papers.

Trevor Mallard’s Moa motives remain unclear. A futurist? A fantasist? A fool? Paul Little spelt it out in the Herald on Sunday: Moa fantasy a dead duck: “In a speech that could be described as wide-ranging but would perhaps better be described as rambling, a senior member of the New Zealand Parliament advocated bringing the extinct moa back to life as a tourist attraction for the Rimutaka National Park….Rather than daydreaming about undoing the past, we need to concentrate on making sure that our nearly 3000 endangered species have a future. It’s not too late to prevent their disappearance. And it’s much easier to save an apparently doomed species than to resurrect one. Although, with this sort of thinking at its senior levels, I’m not sure that rule applies to the Labour Party.”

No one thanked Mallard, one of Labour’s longest-serving members, for introducing the concept of ‘extinction’ so preposterously into the political conversation. On Stuff, Tracy Watkins called it ‘Mallard’s mad Moa blurt’: “Labour needed Trevor Mallard this week like it needed a hole in the head. Mallard’s blurt about bringing Moa back from the dead was a gift to National who gloried in the treasure trove of one-liners about dinosaurs and extinction. Ironically, Mallard’s grand Moa plan coincided with a morning tea shout to mark him and Annette King celebrating three decades in Parliament. Even Mallard’s Labour colleagues couldn’t resist the Jurassic Park comparisons. Bizarrely, there was also a school of thought that Mallard might actually be a genius because people were finally talking about Labour. That must surely be the definition of clutching at straws, but it is symptomatic of the trough Labour has found itself in that generating any sort of chatter round the water cooler – even when it invites ridicule – is an improvement.”

Why Trevor, why? In the Dominion Post, Duncan Garner theorised that “Mallard is in trouble in his Hutt South electorate, which he knows is now a marginal seat. National is pulling out all the stops to up-end him. So Mallard set out to court some publicity with a bird-brained idea that detracted from some sensible Labour policy, offering to fund $100 for every pupil at schools that do not hit up parents for “voluntary” donations. Mallard is one of Labour’s most experienced MPs. He should be taking the fight to National. Instead he’s content to play the class clown, dragging leader David Cunliffe into the fray, who was forced to declare that the “moa’s not a goer”. When you’re trying to present your party as an alternative government you need to stay on-message – and look like you’re ready to govern. If National gets it way in Hutt South Mallard could have plenty of time to roam the hills in his beloved Wainuiomata. No wonder he’s already thinking about who could keep him company.”

One would like to think at this late stage of the game that a government in waiting had its ducks in a row, that it had a compelling message and that that message was being relentlessly sold by disciplined disciples, undeviating in their devotion to the cause. The object of the exercise is votes not jokes. The Left is pushing a rock up a hill at the moment. This week, for reasons best known to himself, Trevor Mallard took some time out to sit on that rock. Thanks for nothing, Trev.

Meanwhile, true to form, our no-surprises Government continued to deliver surprises. In the spotlight this week was Foreign Minister Murray McCully, sprung for saying one thing in public and doing another in private. This week’s Herald on Sunday editorial blared ‘Diplomatic duplicity is a disgrace’.

“McCully insisted the ministry had asked Malaysia to waive immunity so Muhammad Rizalman bin Ismail could be tried in this country. Malaysia’s foreign minister, Anifah Aman, said New Zealand had wanted him out. McCully released letters to show Aman was wrong. Too late, McCully learned his officials were putting one message on paper but giving a different message to the Malaysians face to face. That sort of duplicity might be diplomatic but it is not acceptable. Who was the ministry’s formal letter intended to deceive? The minister? The prime minister? The public? All could be forgiven for taking the letter at face value. It expressed the only proper position for a country that means to punish crimes against a citizen. The unnamed officials who gave their Malaysian counterparts a different message were not thinking of the woman who had complained to the police and has a right to see justice done. What were they thinking? The Herald has unearthed four comparable cases in the past four years. When diplomats offend, it seems, they look after each other. McCully needs to change that culture and gain his officials’ confidence. This mess suggests something is seriously wrong in the ranks of those who represent our interests and values to the world. And it is not over yet.”

In the Dominion, Duncan Garner didn’t ” buy the emerging spin that it’s all the ministry’s fault.” : “It is unforgivable that McCully wasn’t all over this from the start, engaging Allen and seeking regular updates. That’s a minister’s job. Perhaps the minister was too busy wining and dining those who may vote for us to get a place on the UN Security Council? Or was he hopelessly distracted while greasing up the Yanks in Washington with the prime minister to worry about a young Kiwi victim and the whereabouts of the Malaysian diplomat? How hard is it to ask a few questions? McCully said this week that he’d followed good process throughout. That is laughable. Is the relationship between Allen and McCully so dysfunctional that all this got simply lost? Something is not right here. Blaming Mfat staff might be politically convenient, but it doesn’t look or feel right.
The buck stops with ministers. Yes, McCully grabbed a late victory by getting the diplomat to return here for trial – but I say the damage has been done. He and his department have got this one horribly wrong. You can only imagine how the female complainant is feeling watching this circus play out.”

Heads will roll over this diplomatic incident. Not McCully’s though. The PM said he had not received nor would he accept McCully’s resignation. For John Key, excusing Ministerial incompetence seems to be the true meaning of ‘no-surprises’.

Finally, a couple of confessions in the NZ Herald grabbed the headlines: ‘David Cunliffe: I’m sorry for being a man’ and ‘Maggie Barry: I was groped by Rolf Harris’. Ms Barry, usually a waste of political space, deserves credit for her forthright account of an encounter with the now-notorious Harris.

Mr Cunliffe, upon whose shoulders the hopes of the Left fall in this election cycle, can’t seem to do a thing right. The Herald reported that his full speech on family violence ” went down well with the overwhelmingly female audience. One woman came up to him as he left and said she had moved away from Labour but his speech had won her vote back. Refuge chief executive Heather Henare said Labour had consulted her about its policy, unlike the National Government which announced its own policy on family violence this week without consulting Refuge. “David Cunliffe’s speech was, I have to say, inspiring,” she said. Unfortunately, for Cunliffe and Labour, that’s not what the headline said.

If Labour thought it could name and shame prominent members of the Government and get away with it, then it had another thing coming. And this week, it came. With the PM in the White House, David Cunliffe found himself in the Dog House, according to some, hoisted by his own petard, off his high horse and on to the moral low-ground. With less than three months until the election, many speculate this is the own goal that loses the match.

On RadioLive, Duncan Garner didn’t mince words. Was it a ‘BRAIN-FADE OR A LIE FROM CUNLIFFE?’ screams the headline. “If David Cunliffe’s credibility wasn’t shot before this, it is now. Cunliffe is now unelectable as the next Prime Minister. He had made it clear: he had not had anything to do with, or met or advocated for National party donor Donghua Liu. But, that’s gone up in smoke, because it’s now become clear he did advocate for him as the local MP. He wrote a letter to Immigration officials in April 2003 as the MP for New Lynn – on behalf of Liu who was concerned about the time it was taking to process his Investment Category application. Cunliffe says he can’t recall any of it and his office had no record of the letter. That’s just hopeless. It’s not even a creative excuse. None of this looks flash for Cunliffe. He looks dishonest and who can trust him now? This goes to the heart of his credibility, integrity and likeability; on all three fronts he’s in serious trouble. He’s either got “brain-fade”, or he’s a sloppy liar. Perhaps both.”

In the New Zealand Herald, Claire Trevett was in a similarly unforgiving vein, “Oh David – it’s come down to a question of trust” she writes. ” After Williamson resigned, media were put through the spectacle of Mr Cunliffe responding with the same two lines line over and over again to every question. Williamson’s actions, he said, were “yet another example of the decline in standards of this National Government” and any minister who did such a thing under his reign would be “instantly gone”. Snap, Mr Cunliffe.”

According to the Herald on Sunday editorial, ‘Labour looks in serious disarray’: “With no alternative leader coming forward, the party’s only hope is that Cunliffe can be an effective campaigner. There were signs in the leadership contest last year that he might be. His supreme confidence and his theatrical gestures could shine in television debates. But stubborn pride could be his undoing if it prevents him admitting uncertainty or conceding he could be wrong, as it did on the Liu letter this week. He tried to show the caucus was behind him but it was not convincing. Labour MPs do not appear surprised at events. What will be surprising is if Cunliffe can recover to remain Labour leader after September 20.”

While many (if not most) of the press were having a field day, a couple of unlikely journalists offered perspective.

In the NZ Herald, whilst flogging his new book on John Key, John Roughan confessed “I admired his refusal to apologise for the Donghua Liu letter this week. He had no need to do so – forgetting a routine letter written 11 years ago and failing to find a record of it is perfectly understandable. His repeated denials that he had even known or helped Liu was forgiveable. It was delicious irony after Cunliffe had made the most of Maurice Williamson’s letter to the police on behalf of the same business immigrant and political donor, but no more than that. Many a politician, including Key, would have apologised and got out of it. Not Cunliffe. It is rare in politics and public relations these days to see somebody stand his ground.”

In the same paper, Fran O’Sullivan felt ‘Unfounded resignation calls should be far from Cunliffe’s mind’. Fran saw it for what it was. “That letter was clearly a pro forma note written by his staffers. There was no element of special pleading. It’s no wonder he had forgotten it. It should not have sparked a Gotcha call from political journalists.
Sure National has delighted in watching the long, slow, curving ball play out which revealed Cunliffe had signed off a letter to Immigration NZ a decade ago to inquire on progress on the Chinese businessman’s residency application.”

More pointedly, she writes “But it would reach the heights of delusion to equate this episode with the obvious transgressions that cost Maurice Williamson his ministerial role when he called police on Liu’s behalf, and should have cost Judith Collins her place in the Cabinet when she overstepped the line in the Oravida saga. This is what really matters when it comes to probity in New Zealand politics. Not the simple oversight of an anodyne and quite benign note to immigration authorities.”

Fran knows a confected scandal when she sees one and it s hard to argue with her advice: “Put aside the “Gotcha” politics that both you and John Key have been indulging in. Instead, get out and sell Labour’s defining policies – something which you are exceptionally skilled at when you take a disciplined approach.”

This close to an election, discipline is certainly required. Under John Key, National plays to win. This week, he was in Washington. Audrey Young covered it in the NZ Herald: “Obama said that under his and Key’s leadership terms — they were both elected to office within days of each other in 2008 — “it is fair to say the US New Zealand relationship has never been stronger”. Key said the United States and New Zealand had a shared history “that words probably can’t define”. “We have a feeling and an understanding of each other and we back each other up and I think that is reflected in the nature of the relationship.”

Words probably will define the Trans Pacific Partnership however and Young reports that “The US-led TPP led their agenda and Obama set a specific goal of getting a TPP deal to the US Congress before November. Key announced yesterday Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would visit New Zealand soon and TPP was bound to be top of the agenda.”

Young gives the last line of her report to a subject that may have consequence far beyond these White House hugs and handshakes. She writes John Key “also indicated on The Nation yesterday that New Zealand would not oppose US air strikes in the growing Iraq crisis.” If the Empire strikes back, New Zealand will not oppose.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/06/23/the-empire-strikes-back-2/feed/7Shallow Throathttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/05/26/shallow-throat/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/05/26/shallow-throat/#commentsSun, 25 May 2014 20:40:43 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=46964
With less than 120 days to go until the next election, the political mud was flying this week. Literally for some. Also conjured for political purpose were the men behind 9/11, the men who killed the Kennedys, Jimmy Savile and, whoever Bill English f****d to produce the budget. Yes, this week, New Zealand politics set new highs for new lows.

First, John Banks. John Archibald Banks. As Ian Steward reported in the Sunday Star-Times, the trial has descended into mud flinging and then soap. “By far the largest public gallery was present on the day Kim Dotcom testified. The giant German sparred with QC David Jones, deflecting accusations he was a liar and that he had concocted his story to punish the Government for his arrest on US copyright charges. The most camera snaps were for Dotcom’s now-estranged, highly manicured wife Mona – so many lenses were trained on her the judge had to tell photographers to stop clicking away in court. Banks himself described Mona to police as “one of the most beautiful looking women on Earth”. On Thursday, when the only evidence was an audio recording of Banks’ police interview, the lasting image from the day was of the MP picking his ear-wax and eating it – caught on camera by TV3 and uploaded to YouTube. Banks’ Facebook page, which earlier had carried messages from well-wishers, was overtaken by people chiding the former ACT leader. “You filthy disgusting little man,” one person wrote. Another said: “Why you be tasting your earwax on the telly g?”

Poor Banksie. After years of public service, it’s come to this. Televised ear-wax eating. Maybe such ingestion can cause mind and memory loss. He certainly claims “‘No memory’ of cheque from SkyCity boss”, as Jimmy Ellingham reported in the NZ Herald. “He was asked about meeting SkyCity chief executive Nigel Morrison in May 2010, where Mr Morrison told police he handed over a cheque in a SkyCity envelope. “I have no memory of this,” Banks said. He also told officers he had no “actual knowledge” of any donations from Dotcom, who he described as on a “different planet to him”. Banks told police he was an “honest trader, straight up, straight down”. “I don’t believe I’ve done anything dishonest, in inverted commas, in my life.”

The difference between knowledge and “actual knowledge” probably amounts to the same thing as doing anything dishonest when not in inverted commas. Like many who serve or have served in the Key administration, it is Banks who lives on ‘a different planet’ where rules, which apply to everyone else, don’t apply to him.

Another case in point is Oravida lobbyist and Minister of Justice Judith Collins. Described by the NZ Herald’s political columnist John Armstrong as a “simultaneous mega-problem”, poor Twitter-banished Judith found herself offside with the National Shooters Association. As Isaac Davison reported in the NZ Herald “A photo op of Justice Minister Judith Collins firing a pistol has led to a complaint to the police watchdog. The National Shooters Association said Mrs Collins had broken the law because was not licensed to the use the weapon and had shot a pistol outside of a gun club. A picture of the minister firing the gun at an ESR testing facility last month was placed on her Facebook page. Association spokesman Richard Lincoln complained to Police Minister Anne Tolley, who referred the matter to police. When police said they would not intervene because Mrs Collins had been supervised at the time, Mr Lincoln wrote a letter to the Independent Police Conduct Authority. He said he had laid the complaint because he wanted “one law for all”.

Of course, that old ‘one law for all’ chestnut didn’t wash with Judith or the PM who retorted “In the end, when ministers go into those environments it’s not at all unusual that we’re asked to test things, try products”. Mr Key, who was speaking after attending an event at Tawa College, said: “I’ve just had some cordial, someone’s given me some jam. I know that’s not quite the same as a gun but she wasn’t walking down the street with it, she was in a highly controlled environment.” He was also asked about Mrs Collins’ ownership of a taser, which usually required a special licence. “You’d have to ask her. She’s never used it on me, so I’m not aware of her having one.” Mrs Collins, a former Police Minister, said the taser was non-operational and was stored in a perspex box. She said it could not be charged up, “although it would be tempting occasionally to be able to”. Only occasionally Judith?

The PM must have been taser-tempted this week when Campbell Live, perhaps the nation’s pre-eminent current affairs show, devoted an entire programme to another old chestnut: the FBI / SIS / GCSB airborne assault and arrest of Kim Dotcom. What did the PM know and when did he know it? John Campbell set out a timeline that would point any reasonable person to the obvious conclusion that the PM and his old friend, the new GCSB boss Ian Fletcher were ‘ in the loop’ well before the raid. But, like Banks and the donations, Key and Fletcher continue to deny it.

According to the NZ Herald, “Prime Minister John Key has accused TV3 broadcaster John Campbell of falling for conspiracy theories in the wake of Campbell Live show on Tuesday about the unlawful surveillance of internet mogul Kim Dotcom by the GCSB spy agency and the appointment of its chief, Ian Fletcher. Mr Key suggested facetiously that Campbell turn next to whether US President Barack Obama was born in the United States, whether the American Government was behind the September 11 attacks and who killed the Kennedys. “I’ve had some respect for John,” Key said to reporters at Parliament, “but when you do, I suppose, two years and come up with absolutely nada, what you do is what he did which was set a whole lot of assumptions to music. “The first I ever heard of Kim Dotcom was the 19th of January 2012.”

In the Herald, Fran O’Sullivan raced to PM’s defence: “A fully-fledged investigation would not only have “joined the dots”, but it would have given us full details of what went on during the various meetings which Campbell detailed. Unfortunately it didn’t…Watching the TV3 investigation had me pondering how good was Campbell’s own source – let’s call him/her Shallow Throat?” According to Fran’s logic, short of a videotaped confession, it is reasonable to presume the PM and head of the GCSB were unaware of a major international surveillance operation on their watch (in Key’s electorate!) even when the weight of circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points in the opposite direction. Hmmmmm. Who’s the shallow throat here?

More convincing, compelling even, was American policy analyst Professor Paul Buchanan, interviewed on Radio Live by Sean Plunkett. In his view, “it defies credulity that Mr Fletcher and Mr Key were not informed in advance of the raid on Dotcom and the GCSB’s involvement so I’ve always found it quite curious that neither will admit to having been briefed…(they’ve) caught themselves up in a bitter web of untruths: if (they) didn’t know in advance they were either incompetent or poorly served by their subordinates in the GCSB.”

Buchanan believed the Government had “obfuscated, deflected and been less than truthful” with its relationship with the Five Eyes community. He had questions about “the truthfulness of (our) political leadership” when it came to the provision of information used in lethal drone strikes. Discussing the PM’s upcoming White House photo-op, Buchanan raised questions about New Zealand’s ability to run an independent foreign policy and the perils of straddling a strategic and security alliance with the United States and an economic alliance with China.

“Rubbing shoulders with larger players and celebrities is fun and it’s all fine and dandy but that’s not the stuff of statecraft.” Buchanan said. “The current Prime Minister and his entourage are not behaving like statesmen when they cosy up and curry favour”.

As things get more turgid in the run-up to election day, there will be plenty more mud-slinging, cosying up and currying favour. Politics is not for the feint-hearted. Or the shallow-throated.

This week, National received its worst reviews since taking office as Maurice Williamson lost his portfolios and Judith Collins lost her marbles. The halcyon days of presidential golf games and royal baby tours, distracting debates on changes to the country’s flag, even a moment to gloat over Shane Jones ship-jumping treachery: all was lost, forgotten, rendered irrelevant, overwhelmed, subsumed and starved of oxygen by meltdowns, actual, factual and circumstantial Ministerial abuses, conflicts of interests and accusations of cash for Cabinet access. What became clear was that when money talks, even through an interpreter, National listens. And if this narrative takes hold, it could lose the election.

“National is floundering.” writes John Armstrong in the NZ Herald. The wheels are falling off. “ Someone or something has torn up National’s prepared script which was supposed to guarantee the party safe passage to polling day. That plan was designed to take advantage of a series of events in the countdown to the earlier-than-usual poll. These included the Prime Minister’s trip to China in March, April’s weeklong media feeding frenzy courtesy of the future King George VII and his mother, next week’s probably unspectacular, but responsible Budget and an as-yet-to-be-confirmed prime ministerial visit to the White House. These election-year distractions would keep the media focused anywhere but on Labour, starving that party of the oxygen of publicity. National, meanwhile, would project a business-as-usual image of a safe-pair-of-hands governing party, such that there would be little for voters to get excited about and continuity would be the name of the game by the time election day arrived. But things have suddenly gone awry for National.”

So who tore up the script? According to Armstrong, “two ministers of long experience… who are not short of political acumen”. That’s right, Judith and Maurice, with over 40 years of political acumen between them. The Queen of Twitter and the King of Gay Rainbows. Both “have fallen from grace, having exhibited all the symptoms of classic Beehive arrogance and behaved like stereotypical born-to-rule Tories.” Maurice fell on his sword. After his appearance on Q & A, he cast a somewhat broken figure, requiring assistance to leave the set.

No so Judith. Incensed by the demise of her friend and colleague, she gave TV3’s Brook Sabin a piece of her mind in an interview that made specific allegations and general threats against the press. Stung by a media hornet, Judith sought revenge by kicking over the nest. Unsurprisingly, the hornets had something to say about this.

“Threat to dish dirt on journalists a step too far for PM, who does not want an election-year war with the media.” was the headline for Fran O’Sullivan’s response in the NZ Herald. “Right now Cabinet minister Judith Collins is deservedly a busted flush. Collins still holds sway among a considerable faction of the National Party membership. But her imperious arrogance – disgracefully on show when she threatened to dish the dirt on political journalists at the weekend – was a step too far for John Key, who does not want his Government to be embroiled by an undisciplined minister in an election-year war with the media. That issue – rather than the slow striptease over Collins’ cosy meetings with her friends from Oravida during her controversial trip to China last year – is what pushed Key to the point where he applied the choke chain to the Cabinet’s Rottweiler. Pity Key didn’t yank the chain earlier.”

O’Sullivan’s savaging goes on. “The nation’s top chief executives delivered their verdict on Collins two years ago when they permanently marked her down and out of the top Cabinet rankings in the Herald’s 2012 Mood of the Boardroom survey. Their perception was that Collins was a bully. She was perceived to have axed the highly respected John Judge as chairman of ACC by hanging him out to dry over some inhouse bungling during the Bronwyn Pullar affair.”

Fran then goes on to join the dots. “The same behaviour has permeated the Oravida affair. Collins is a senior minister. Her husband is a director of Oravida. Her friends Devi (Stone) Shi and JuliaXu are founder/owner and executive director respectively. Oravida – which exports fresh milk to China – found itself locked out of the Chinese market in the wake of the Fonterra false botulism scare. It was still locked out when Collins went out of her way to meet up with Shi and Xu three times during a trip to China on justice portfolio issues. Of course her presence at the “private dinner” conferred considerable status on Shi. That would have been noted. It’s not surprising that Ambassador Carl Worker exercised his judgment and turned down an invitation from her to join the dinner. This was after all a time when Oravida’s competitors – and a host of New Zealand infant milk exporters – were facing a lockout from the China market. Most of them are still locked out. As is one of Oravida’s competitors, although Oravida is back exporting.” Ancient grudges. Damning stuff.

On Radio Live, Duncan Garner did not hold back in his opinion piece ‘ JUDITH COLLINS ‘UNHINGED AND OUT OF CONTROL’. ” Let’s be really clear: Collins yesterday lost the plot. She was unhinged. She was a bully. She plays this passive-aggressive game of threats. It’s no way to act as a Minister. In my opinion, she’s no longer fit for her ministerial warrant. She now looks ‘un-ministerial’. The Oravida mess has got to her. And she’s to blame. No one else….Every Prime Minister dreads a Minister at war with the press, especially in election year. What on earth has got into Collins? She’s no bigger than her Government, but she’s acting like it. Collins has now bought a fight. And the Press Gallery is a strange beast – it loves a target.”

Like Fran O’Sullivan, Garner states the obvious. “The truth is, her story about what she was doing in China with Oravida has completely collapsed. She has lost all credibility. What started as a pop-in cup of milk and a private dinner turns out to be a turbo-blasted official dinner involving both Governments, their officials, a senior Minister (Collins) and a National party donor (Oravida). Collins presented it totally differently and she’s been found out, case closed. She didn’t tell the truth to the PM – she misled him, she misled Parliament and she misled you, the voter.”

In Metro, Steve Braunias had to revisit his 4 000 word profile on Judith. In ‘The Queen is Dead’, he writes “Her bizarre and self-destructive rant to TV3’s Brooke Sabin in the weekend has led to Prime Minister John Key instructing her to take stress leave. The pressure from the Oravida scandal finally got to her. I looked at her face when she shot her mouth off to Sabin and saw someone unstable, someone on the verge of a kind of nervous collapse…All throughout the Oravida scandal, she has acted paranoid, all weeping and accusatory, the cliché of a bully who can hand it out but can’t take it.” Remember, this is the Minister of Justice he is talking about.

Aside from Cameron Slater and Rachel Glucina, only one journalist offered any kind of solace. In the NZ Herald, John Roughan found it “Hard to see conflict of interest’. John’s bogus view was that it was the Cabinet Manual that was out of line, not the Minister. “The case against Judith Collins seems to be that a minister should not help a company in which she has a personal interest even when doing so is also in the national interest. Is that really the rule? It seems so. The Cabinet Manual says, “A conflict may arise if people close to a minister, such as a minister’s family, whanau or close associates may derive, or be perceived as deriving, some personal financial or other benefit from a decision or action by the minister …” It makes no distinction between an action that accords with the national interest and one that is in conflict with it. It may need updating. Exporters to China are dealing with a business and bureaucratic culture that has not fully emerged from communism and is accustomed to the ruling party playing a leading role in industry at all levels. The line between public and private enterprise is much less clear than it is here.”

The line between public and private enterprise. Where to draw it? Unless it is clarified and rigorously enforced, the allure of Chinese money will prove too strong and, in New Zealand, political corruption will become a syndrome.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/05/12/the-china-syndrome/feed/17A Big Holehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/04/28/a-big-hole/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/04/28/a-big-hole/#commentsSun, 27 Apr 2014 18:39:18 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=45593
Judith Collins heaved a huge sigh of relief this week as Shane Jones, quitting politics in the most political way imaginable, hogged the headlines.

On TV3, Patrick Gower broke the news: ‘Shane Jones to leave Labour, set to work with Murray McCully’. For a moment, like a lot things to do with Shane, I thought it was a joke. But no. As Paddy breathlessly reported, “Shane Jones is quitting Parliament and the Labour Party, and there is a job already lined up for him – a job offer from the National Government. Nothing is signed and sealed, but the job is as ‘Pacific Economic Ambassador’ – a position created by Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully. Prime Minister John Key is also aware of the job offer’.

On some level, it reeked of dastardly, political skulduggery. In the NZ Herald, Claire Trevett awarded ‘the Nobel Prize for rat cunning in neutralising an enemy force’ to Foreign Minister Murray McCully. ‘The Prince of Darkness is back in business’ Gower exclaimed. ‘That master of the dark arts of politics Murray McCully has pulled an almighty swifty on Labour with a dodgy deal to get Shane Jones out of Parliament and working for National. In layman’s terms “McCully-avelli”, as I call him, has kicked David Cunliffe right between the legs where it hurts. It is rat-cunning backroom politics and McCully and John Key would have been high-fiving when they landed Jones. Yet this “Pacific Economic Ambassador” role McCully has created for Jones needs to be called for what it is – dodgy as. It is a good job and one Jones could not resist – McCully made him an offer he knew Jones couldn’t refuse. But make no mistake – it is a complete and utter jack-up done primarily to hurt Labour.’

But all is fair in love and politics. The dodginess was not so much in the offer than the acceptance. If you can take out the opposition with cushy job offers, why wouldn’t you? It’s nothing less than we have come to expect from National. Spot the high profile malcontent. Tell him what he wants to hear. Offer him a job. Good money. Bob’s your uncle. Or in this case, Shane.

Shane Jones. In the Herald on Sunday, Jonathan Milne called him ‘a flawed man’ and the first to admit it : ‘A booze-drinking, porn-viewing, wife-cheating, frustrated Kiwi bloke. But he also has a devil-may-care candour that will be missed from politics. And when this Kiwi bloke walked away from Labour this week, he may have taken thousands more voters just like him.’ On Stuff, Vernon Small said ‘ If things could get any worse than the cluster failure around Shane Jones’ sudden departure to work for a government he was supposed to want out of office, it is hard to see what they could be…Jones pulled the pin, walked out of the caucus room and tossed the grenade over his shoulder’.’ The Herald’s John Armstrong felt Jones’ resignation couldn’t have come at a worse time. His ‘shock decision to quit as a Labour MP will lead voters to draw one conclusion and one conclusion only: that he thinks Labour cannot win the September general election. His departure is close to an unmitigated disaster for Labour’.

Really? For sure, twenty weeks from an election, disunity is not a good look. The spotlight should be on the failings of the Government and what the Left plans to do about them and Jones’ headline-grabbing decision doesn’t help. Having said that, it’s hard to disagree with Stuff’s editorial: ‘While there will undoubtedly be glee in National circles at having caused such disarray within Labour, Jones’s virtues should not be exaggerated. For all his high education (like David Cunliffe, he is a product of the distinguished Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) and undoubted business expertise (he was chairman of Sealord), his political career was less than stellar. He caused deep embarrassment to the Labour Party with his grubby misuse of a ministerial credit card and twice was stood down from office. He was cleared of any misconduct over an immigration matter, but the report of an inquiry into it did not give much confidence in his diligence in handling his portfolio. His facility with two languages was enviable but at times the suspicion arose that it simply gave him the opportunity to spout nonsense in both of them. He was once spoken of as a future prime minister, but in the end, for all his capacity at raising a rhetorical fuss, his political achievements were not great’.

His political liabilities however were numerous and, in his recent attacks on the Greens, ever more so. As Metiria Turei was quoted in the Herald, “I don’t think that Shane has a grip on his emotions and I think that he lets fly regardless of whether it’s sensible or not.” The difficulty for Jones was that, even under a best-case scenario, he would end up serving in a Government with the Greens and under Russel Norman. It was not a prospect to which he was prepared to devote his time and talent. As far as he was concerned, he was bigger than that and better than that and, typically, Shane was not backward in coming forward to tell everyone about it.

He did the political talk shows over the weekend. If he was trying to frame his actions in terms of political conscience, many viewers were unconvinced. ‘Judas’ and ‘Narcissist’ were two themes commonly expressed by those texting in. They felt Jones was bigger than that and better than that. Turns out he wasn’t. When the going got tough, Shane got going.

In the NZ Herald, Claire Trevett pondered how Labour, ‘struggling to prove it can still connect with middle New Zealand’ would keep up without Jones. She quotes deputy leader David Parker: ‘just because Jones has gone, what he stood for had not. He said fighting against inequality and on behalf of workers had been part of Labour’s ethos for almost 100 years. It had managed to express them before Jones and would manage to do so after Jones’. No one is indispensable. No messenger, however ‘colourful’ is bigger than the message.

Of the man himself, Trevett writes an obituary of sorts. ‘He was anointed by the media to begin with, crucified by the media when he stuffed up, and then built up again. Most politicians look forward to getting away from that level of scrutiny but it is no real surprise that Jones says the sudden absence of it is the thing he is most worried about adjusting to. “Anyone who has been out there in public and seeks affirmation of their political ideas and personal attributes, once the curtain comes down; I have to tell the truth. One of the issues I had to ask myself was can I make that transition and not be miserable?” He still doesn’t seem certain he can. But he shrugs and says attention has already turned to his successor and good friend, Kelvin Davis. “I’m not even gone yet and Kelvin’s bought a new suit, is polishing his shoes and saying ‘I am now the dog and Shane is the tree’.” In his own mind, a mighty Totara no doubt.

This week, amidst royalty, puppies, babies and Paula Bennett on the catwalk, it was Don Brash, former leader of the National and Act parties, former Governor of the Reserve Bank and, disturbingly, former roué of the Right, who thrust himself, shirt-unbuttoned, into the headlines.

Brash had never struck me as overly-endowed in the humour department. I might have to revise my view. Anyone who managed to lose the leadership of not one but TWO political parties and then calls their autobiography ‘Incredible Luck’ has to have their finger on the funny bone. In many ways, it’s a kiss-and-tell book and Don emerges more a sexual animal than a political animal. Who would have thought? Who could have thought? But there he was, pictured on the cover of the Dominion Post, looking like an ancient, balding, bespectacled, hairy-chested former male-stripper: Don Brash: sex-machine. To think, this man came within a within a whisker of Prime Ministership.

Don writes in his book he wouldn’t be the first great man to swim in such warm, perilous, flesh-filled waters. He knows that “there is an extremely powerful biological urge which most men have to learn to control. The result of that drive is that many men take huge risks for the chance to have a sexual relationship. Among American presidents the names of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton immediately spring to mind.” Ah yes. JFK. Bill Clinton. The next name that immediately springs to mind is, of course, Don Brash. But we must be thankful for small mercies: “I have not had a large number of sexual partners, and none at all before my first marriage. But I have no choice than to admit that the number exceeds the number of women I was married to.” Spoken like a true former Governor of a Reserve Bank.

Reviewing the book in the NZ Herald, John Armstrong unattractively referred to the chapter of sexploits as ‘warts-and-all’: “Dr Brash writes that adultery was certainly not part of his Christian upbringing…He realised, of course, that some men were gay. “I have never suspected, even for a single moment, that I might be gay.””. Nevertheless, according to Fran O’Sullivan, Brash “doesn’t appear to know what side his toast is buttered on.”(Man of principle with political feet of clay/ NZ Herald).

For O’Sullivan, ” the more fascinating disclosure was the secret deal he and John Key hatched in a Blenheim motel room in late 2004 for Brash to hand over the prime ministership to Key before the 2008 election. That secret deal – which Key appeared to give credence to this week – does neither man any credit. New Zealanders are entitled to know who and what they are voting for.” In an election year, it’s a point well-raised. It might be all over for Brash but the PM is out there right now glad-handing one and all, letting the cameras into his (beach) house, positioning himself, as ever, as relaxed and open. After Sky City’s Convention Centre deal, after the Pike River families’ cash-for-justice settlement, after the top-drawer of trash on political opponents, this revelation speaks to a pattern. John Key is a man of of secrecy and deals, preferably in combination. That’s how he came into the role. And that’s how he intends to keep it. Fran O’Sullivan is right: “Both Brash and Key need to put a lot more on the table about this “deal”.

That’s not likely. As Tracy Watkins reported on Stuff, the PM is too busy perfecting his image as ‘Everyman’. “He even managed to carry off a women’s magazine cover clutching a couple of guide dog puppies with wife Bronagh. The puppies were on loan from their real homes for the photo shoot, in which John and Bronagh are paired in soft pastel shades of blue and pink. It is a scene straight out of a political satire – one of those episodes where the spin doctors dream up stunts to boost their candidates’ appeal to women voters. And on any other politician, that is probably how it would come across. The puppy link is that the Keys sponsor four guide dog puppies and donated $20,000 to the Royal Foundation for the Blind on the day the women’s mag turned up. That the magazine cover manages to convey the impression that the Keys sponsored the puppies on behalf of baby Prince George probably didn’t evoke any protests from his office, even though that was blatantly not the case.” Ruthless political operators, men of secrecy and deals, don’t clutch guide dog puppies on the cover of women’s magazines for political purpose. Do they? Shhhhhhhhhhhhurley not?

“It’s not just the women’s mags that Key is careful to feed. He keeps in touch with gossip columnists, who oblige with quirky yarns about domestic life at the Key household; does many regular slots on radio, even on shows most people would never have heard of, such as the Farming Show (of “gay red shirt” fame); and he recently admitted phoning bloggers like Cameron Slater as well to keep them in the loop. That his busiest media day – television, followed by at least three radio interviews in a row – falls on a day in which his diary is already full with Cabinet meetings is testament to how much importance he places on these appearances to help cultivate the “everyman” image.”

This week, Campbell Live caught Everyman cultivating at home. Well, at his beach home. As Paul Casserly wrote in the NZ Herald “Like Game of Thrones, the visit to the Key’s beachfront bach in Omaha was a mixture of comedy and horror. Thankfully there was no sex.” (Unlike Don Brash’s book!) “It was relaxed, convivial. It was Key as we’ve come to expect him. Smiling, goofy. He was literally at home and so, felt at-home enough to call Bronagh her pet name, “Bing, Bing” in the presence of the cameras. “What did you call her?” Campbell asked. “None of your business,” said Bing Bing. John joked about the panda at the London Zoo and then admitted to being a Chinese spy by way of diversion.” Smiling. Goofy. Relaxed. Convivial. Pandas. Is what you’re seeing, what you’re getting? Are New Zealanders really entitled to know who and what they are voting for? Maybe we should ask Don Brash.

Tracy Watkins observed Key’s opponents would grumble that the puppy story and accompanying photos are a cynical election-year attempt to evoke an emotional response. “They are undoubtedly right.” she said. And undoubtedly, they are. To use a phrase immortalised this week by Simon Bridges, it’s ’emotive claptrap’. Blatant emotive claptrap. But isn’t that what political campaigns are all about these days?

Defamation! Corruption! Sleaze! Incest! Nazis!? Only a few weeks into the 2014 election campaign, Hitler made an entrance. Given the bizarre twists and turns to date, one could ask “What took you so long?”

On one level, ‘news’ that Kim Dotcom owned a signed copy of Mein Kampf unfolded like the famous Fawlty Towers ‘Don’t mention the war’ episode. Dotcom (real name Schmidtz) is a German. For some, like Basil Fawlty, this fact alone is indicative of Nazi sympathies. For many in the media, ownership of that book, autographed, is proof-positive that our local German squillionaire is a Nazi. In a guilt-by-association slur campaign worthy of Goebbels, they put in the jack-boot. Even John Key’s Austrian Jewish mother was mentioned.

The NZ Herald editorial urged Dotcom to “rethink ownership of Hitler book”. Apparently, ” Ownership of such books may be a harmless hobby for the everyday person but as a public figure, it can never be so” So, private everyday nobodies who have the money to buy much-sought-after, extremely pricey, collectible manuscripts are at liberty to do so. “But it can never be so when the owner is putting himself forward as a public figure, as Mr Dotcom did in launching the Internet Party the day after the Mein Kampf revelation. In that circumstance, possession of the book can never be anything other than unwise, given it is so closely associated with the Holocaust. When the owner is, to boot, a German national, it raises real issues about his very state of awareness.” It is Basil Fawlty-logic: German national + signed copy of Mein Kampf = Nazi sympathiser.

Kerre McIvor was troubled, asserting in her weekly NZ Herald column that “suggestions that books are bad are evocative of book-burning demonstrations – demonstrations the like of which the author of Mein Kampf was particularly fond. And we all know where that led.” Fran O’Sullivan too was dubious (Dotcom puts Harawira’s principles on the line: NZ Herald): “So what? Mere ownership doesn’t make him a Nazi sympathiser. (I own a Chinese tract signed by the disgraced Bo Xilai and that doesn’t make me a Communist either). This issue will remain a red herring unless evidence is made public — not merely hinted at — that Dotcom is a closet Nazi and anti-Semitic to boot. Until then there is no game-changer.”

Of course, this is an election year and evidence that Dotcom is ‘a closet Nazi and anti-Semitic to boot’ might be hard to come by. Until then, insinuation will do just as well it seems. Colin Espiner let rip in the Sunday Star-Times (Dotcom logs on for a Fight): “It isn’t a crime to buy a copy of the autobiography of one of the 20th-century’s most monstrous figures, unless you live in France, Germany, Austria or Hungary – which ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia. And there are legitimate scholarly reasons for owning a copy of Mein Kampf. No doubt the book is in most major libraries in New Zealand (It is, including the Parliamentary Library, but who cares? SP). But let’s be honest. Owning a rare first edition personally signed by Herr Hitler and gifted to Hermann Esser, one of the founders of the hated and feared Third Reich, is just a little bit creepy. Actually, given Dotcom’s German nationality, it’s more than creepy. It’s boorish, stupid, crude, and unthinkably insensitive. Most Germans would rather collect excrement than have anything to do with a regime they remain deeply ashamed of to this day.” Once again, Basil Fawlty-logic: German national + signed copy of Mein Kampf = ‘more than creepy: boorish, stupid, crude and unthinkably insensitive’. Time Magazine (who, shock-horror-probe, selected Hitler as their 1938 Man of the Year), recently reported that “A signed, two-volume set of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” sold for $64,850 Thursday, nearly three times its expected sale price, according to the auction house that put the books up for sale.” Creepy? It seems Dotcom is not alone in his desire to ‘collect excrement’. And such expensive excrement!

After much sturm und drang, Espiner reluctantly notes that “Dotcom’s response to the revelations of his Nazi links is to play the victim and accuse his opponents – principally the National Party – of a vicious political smear. Which of course it is. National wants Dotcom out of the picture and preferably out of the country.” EH??? What’s that??? National is engaged in a vicious political smear??? National is invoking Hitler and the Holocaust for political purpose??? One might hope that a journalist with such an obviously highly-attuned moral sensibility would be outraged at such a ‘ creepy, boorish, stupid, crude, and unthinkably insensitive’ tactic. Surely, shhhhhurely, something is sacred.

In the Herald (No app yet for political scrutiny), Toby Manhire records that ” The timing of revelations that Kim Dotcom owns Nazi memorabilia could hardly have been worse, coming on the eve of the launch of his political enterprise, the Internet Party.” In ‘ Labour view left right out’ (NZ Herald), John Drinnan joins a few more dot-coms: “The influence of Whale Oil was apparent on Wednesday night, when TV3 parliamentary reporter Brook Sabin revealed that Kim Dotcom owns a rare, signed copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf – a founding document for the Nazi ideology. Sabin, a promising young journalist, asked Dotcom if owning the book meant he agreed with Hitler. Dotcom said he was no Nazi, and was simply a collector of such texts. A few minutes later the pro-National blogger Cameron Slater – an assiduous Dotcom critic – “coincidentally” posted about the Hitler book on his Whale Oil website. It appears Slater sparked the item, with his inquiries prompting Dotcom to feed the story to TV3, hoping to get in first.”

In Drinnan’s view, “hanging over the TV3 report was the totalitarian notion that someone who owns a book such as Mein Kampf has something to answer for. What’s next – searches through MPs’ bookshelves to see if they include any unwholesome reading material? TV3’s Sun-style tabloid treatment would have slipped by, had not political editor Patrick Gower weighed in and hyped the Mein Kampf issue even further. He thought the Nazi memorabilia gave Prime Minister John Key the upper hand against Dotcom, and even alluded to Key’s mother being an Austrian Jew.” Someone has something to answer for in all this. And it’s not Kim Dotcom.

The Prime Minister has already announced his close connections to Cameron Slater. Indeed, late last year, we all discovered that the PM’s top drawer has the low down on the behaviour of his political opponents. During the ‘Len Brown sex scandal’, Felix Marwick reported for NewstalkZB that ‘John Key has told media he’s regularly had people come to him with details on other politicians. “And I’ve done the same thing to every person that’s rung me. I’ve written it down, put it in my top drawer, and kept it to myself. “I’m just not interested in engaging in it.” This week, one could be forgiven for suspecting he became a little more interested in engagement.

“National wants Dotcom out of the picture and preferably out of the country.” This “vicious political smear”, coming on the eve of a launch of new political party opposed to National, raises the ugly spectre that the PM is not above using Nazis, Nazi tactics and, by ghastly association, his own mother for political gain. Nothing is sacred.

In a week when the Prime Minister announced an early election and proposed a flag referendum, a commercial airliner vanished into thin air, a South African paralympian stood trial for murder and Russia amassed forces on the Crimean border, it was some feat for Judith Collins to hit the headlines. But hit them she did.

A nation was riveted as the Minister of Justice, widely touted as National’s next leader, a woman who revelled in her reputation as ‘Crusher Collins’, the same woman who only last month pitilessly and publicly lambasted a fellow-parliamentarian for her ‘vile’ fashion choices began to unravel, side-step, back-flip, and finally break down in tears. “I am also only a human being” she told the Breakfast show. “We all make mistakes”. The exact scope of those mistakes and their consequences, for Collins and for National, remain to be seen. So far, they haven’t been a good look. In the NZ Herald, ‘Sleazy’ was the word that came to Bryce Edwards’ mind.

The facts suggest Collins, as Minister of Justice, visited China in October 2013 on official tax-payer-funded business. So far, so good. However, after hours or ‘on her way to the airport’, she also spent facetime in the presence of Oravida executives and a Chinese border official, or sampling the Company’s wares, appearing on their website endorsing (or ‘promoting’) said wares. And as we all now know, Ms Collins husband is one of three directors of Oravida. Upon her return to New Zealand, Collins mentioned nothing of her extra-curricular activities. After all, these people were her and her husband’s close personal friends.

The problem for Judith, then and now, is a little book called the Cabinet Manual which provides strict guidelines for actual and perceived conflicts of interest. Unsurprisingly (except for Judith) these guidelines apply most particularly to close personal friends and husbands. Any law student is familiar with the mantra “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. Over this week, the full story trickled (or according to cartoonist Emmerson, was waterboarded) out of the Minister of Justice. The opposition and the media smelt blood. It was a feeding frenzy.

Two opinion pieces by Duncan Garner for Radio Live are perhaps the most damning. According to Garner, ‘Judith Collins Must Go’: “Judith Collins has been caught out not telling the truth. She has misled the New Zealand public; she has misled her boss the Prime Minister; and her best defence is that she lied to us, by omission. It is simply not good enough. She is no longer fit to be a Minister, she has failed the truth test. I have been saying this for a week now: She did not just pop in to Oravida, she planned it weeks out. Now, we know she had a top level dinner and meeting with Oravida bosses and a senior official from the Chinese Government, all in a private capacity. There is no such thing when you are representing NZ as a Minister overseas.Remember, her husband is a director of this firm. That’s the conflict. The Collins family stands to gain from the success of this company. You don’t just forget this sort of detail, you hold it back on purpose, and that’s what she has done. I have always said when you put a Minister or MP in a tight spot, their default setting is to lie. They do not tell the truth and this is what has happened here. Collins has once again proven my theory correct. She has misled the NZ public and that’s not acceptable. She has lost the confidence of a nation. She has misled the PM – and that’s where it always used to get terminal for Ministers with Helen Clark in charge. But John Key has decided to tough this one out. It’s the wrong decision. He should sack her. He sacked Nick Smith for less in my opinion. Collins simply tried to bluff us, but she has failed and she has been caught out. She’s not indispensable. Her reputation is shot. It’s clear the Chinese saw her visit and subsequent website appearance as an ‘endorsement’. But the Prime Minister continues to claim it was just a ‘promotion’. There is absolutely no difference. It’s the same thing. It’s semantics Prime Minister. The John Key of old would have crucified Helen Clark for such garbage. He needs to step back and see this for what it is. He has been implicated in Judith Collins’s web of deceit. She has misled Kiwis and she has misled the Prime Minister. She is no longer fit to hold the warrant as Justice Minister. I can’t say it anymore direct than this: She should be sacked.”

Garner goes on in “Clark Sacked Ministers for Lying” : “John Key won’t like this, but by Helen Clark’s standards he looks weak. He was lied to by Judith Collins; the best spin you can put on it is that she lied by mission or misled by omission. Take your pick; it’s all semantics. She went to China as Justice Minister for ‘anti-corruption’ business, but ended up meeting Oravida bosses three times – including that ‘secret’ dinner involving a senior Chinese border official. Wow, I bet all Kiwi exporters struggling in China would love that sort of access and help, wouldn’t they? Oravida needs access to China. She was clearly helping her husband’s business, while being paid by the taxpayer to be Justice Minister. Yet she failed to declare this to the Prime Minister and in her report to the Cabinet. It’s a sackable offence. You NEVER mislead the PM. Ever.”

For TV3, Patrick Gower has valiantly and doggedly fronted the story: “Why is John Key scared of Judith Collins? Key has let Collins get off absolutely scot-free after she used her public job to promote her private interests. Collins used the taxpayer’s dime and the privilege of Ministerial office to help out the company her husband works for, Oravida in Shanghai. Most Kiwis would say that just isn’t right. But Key has let it go, not even giving Collins the old cliché of a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket? Is Key scared of Collins?”

For Garner and Gower, using your public job to promote your private interests is a sackable offence. A counter-argument is hard, if not impossible to mount. For the Minister of Justice, therein lies the rub.

If Judith was looking for a softer touch from usually stalwart supporters, it was not forthcoming. In ‘Collins’ shock blunder puts her offside with mates’ (NZ Herald), even John Armstrong struggles to find an upside: “Excuse me, but isn’t Judith Collins the Minister of Justice? Doesn’t holding that portfolio make it even more incumbent on her to follow the rules in the Cabinet Manual to the letter, and especially with regard to something as fundamental as avoiding any suggestion of conflict of interest, real or perceived? Isn’t it even more desirable that the Justice Minister set an example and be pure as the driven snow in ensuring there is no confusion of her official role with private business – rather than trying to argue that her dealings with the milk-exporting company Oravida did not create even the perception of a conflict of interest when her husband’s directorship in the company leads inexorably and inevitably to such a conclusion?”

In the same paper, Fran O’Sullivan is equally fulsome in her condemnation, writing that “Other ministers have vanished for similar lapses of judgment”. She goes on: “It was one thing for this supremely self-confident Cabinet minister to unquestioningly accept an invitation from the Auckland-headquartered company to visit its Shanghai office and drink a glass of the fresh milk it imports from New Zealand. That was already out of line given her husband David Wong-Tung happens to be an Oravida director. The Prime Minister resorted to semantics when he let Collins off the hook by deeming her effusive praise of the milk – now taken down from Oravida’s Chinese website – as merely a “promotion” rather than an “endorsement”. Key brushed that issue aside. But the Cabinet minister’s decision to accept co-founder Stone Shi’s invitation to join him, co-founder and managing director Julia Xu and a high-ranking Chinese border official for a so-called private dinner during the same trip broke the line. Particularly when Collins did not even disclose the dinner – nor the name of this high-ranking Chinese official – in her subsequent report to the Cabinet.” O’Sullivan is not optimistic for Judith’s oft-mentioned political ambitions: “Collins’ slow political strip-tease over her connections with Oravida has indelibly pricked the credibility of this tough female Cabinet minister.”

In The Listener, Jane Clifton holds similar views on Judith’s future prospects (Crusher’s calamity): “But the whole point of the transparency rules and conventions that Collins so insouciantly flouted was that there could have been mischief. As a result of ignoring those rules, Collins now faces utterly unmanageable political risks downstream, in terms of Oravida’s future fortunes in China and how they are perceived to have come about. She can be as innocent as a spring lamb in a garland of daffodils, but this is now all about perception, and politicians never get the benefit of the doubt. The very fact that Oravida is run by two of Collins’ closest friends and her husband should have mandated that she not associate with the company in her ministerial capacity – for her own reputational protection. This might seem overly cautious, as the four socialise personally while at home. But when you’ve got your ministerial hat on, you can’t be anyone’s friend as such. As for failing to disclose the lunch and dinner meetings, including her socialising with a senior Chinese border official, that was so foolish as to be almost surreal, considering Collins’ reputation as a laser-focused political barracuda.”

Adam Bennett reports that ” Justice Minister Judith Collins said yesterday she would resign if it was proved she lobbied a Chinese official on behalf of food exporter Oravida at a dinner in Beijing last year.” (NZ Herald). But as Jane Clifton writes above, we’re in the land of perception now and already, other exporters to China have weighed in about what is perceived as lobbying.

Under the headline ‘Collins’ dinner great for Oravida’, the NZ Herald reports that “Paul O’Brien, the former boss of Auckland-based EasiYo, which exports around $12 million worth of yoghurt in powder form to China annually, said getting all dairy products into the Chinese market had become much more difficult after Fonterra’s botulism false alarm last year and introducing a border control official to a Government Minister would “absolutely” make the process easier and help “smooth the way” for Oravida. “It enhances your own credibility, because if you can get an MP along you are held in high esteem,” O’Brien said. “I would absolutely milk it wherever I could.” He said doing business in China was extremely “relationship based”. “If your container is stuck, you just go up the chain of command in the Government and someone will get it released,” said O’Brien, who left EasiYo in December. Collins has said she only discussed tourism matters at the dinner and Oravida would not have gained any benefit from the meeting. But O’Brien said just the Minister’s presence at the dinner would have benefited the milk firm. “You don’t actually go to these meetings to beat [the officials’] heads to get a tariff reduction or get some goods over the line – it’s all just relationship building.” Chinese officials could even be offended if specific business issues were raised at such an engagement, O’Brien said.”

In most jurisdictions, ‘smoothing the way’ is called lobbying. In most jurisdictions, ‘making the process easier’ is called lobbying. The fact of the dinner is enough. It’s the guest list that matters not the content of the conversation. “Just the Minister’s presence at the dinner would have benefited the milk firm”. For once, Judith didn’t even have to say a word. She just had to turn up. And she did.

Audrey Young (NZ Herald) suggests that “National’s Boadicea (is) likely to shrug off her week from hell”. Given that it’s an election year, given that Ms Collins has stood on many fingers as she ascended the political ladder, and given that her own actions and omissions have exposed her to more than the risk of a perception of conflict of interest, it seems highly unlikely Boadicea will be able to keep this all in the family.

This week, under tragic and bizarre circumstances, two of society’s greatest taboos, suicide and incest, were thrust into the headlines.

Charlotte Dawson’s untimely passing struck a raw nerve, sparking heated debate about mental health and unsocial media. The tact, competence and judgement of mainstream media were also called into question with the publication of a now-notorious opinion piece by the NZ Herald and what can only be described as an unmitigated fiasco at Television New Zealand.

Given the media’s normally coy coverage of this most delicate of subjects, Deborah Hill Cone’s column “It wasn’t just depression that claimed Charlotte” ( the NZ Herald’s first contribution after the breaking news) seemed inexplicably tasteless, spiteful and incendiary. At once professing not to know the woman, Hill Cone then penned her personal letter, a ghastly post-mortem missive, concluding ” You felt shunned for being single, being childless, for having a mental illness. The truth is no one really cares. But for you that was even worse. It is terrifying to think of becoming insignificant, being wiped out, being annihilated. So, ultimately, you chose to preserve Charlotte Dawson, the glamorous brand, aged 47, forever.” Ms Dawson had once expressed her view that New Zealand media was vicious. In this instance, the writer did not disappoint.

If the aim was to provoke, it was well-achieved. Why though, on the subject of suicide and depression, one would seek to provoke remains a mystery that only Ms Hill Cone and her sub-editors can answer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the response was mostly vociferous and highly personal, to the extent that many feared for the well-being of the author. The piece was even discussed on the Sky News Australia programme Paul Murray Live. There, the host wrestled with the freedom of speech argument and that a free society must be able to countenance opinions with which it disagrees. But that was all he could say in its defence. One of the three journalists on that night’s panel thought it a missed opportunity that offered little insight into a complex and sad situation. The other two found it incredible it was ever published and thought the author should lose her job.

Three days later, as a second response, the Herald did what it should have done in the first place: offer a few words of remembrance penned by someone who actually knew the subject. Charlotte Grimshaw’s ‘Life and Times of Wild Charlotte’ was a humane, wistful reflection on the passage of time and the passing of a friend. “Children make you grow up: you will not be a girl anymore but you’ll mind less that you don’t look like one. They soften the blow of ageing; in fact, they make ageing almost all right. Life stops being all about “loving yourself” and starts being about “loving other people”. It makes you empathise – even as you’re noting the fatuousness of “God, we partied hard” (as if “partying hard” is a meaningful activity, rather than a dreary road to ruin, something that needs to be grown out of quick in the interests of survival) you’re utterly sympathetic to the terrible loss, to the image of the beautiful, chaotic Charlotte sitting on her balcony while the sun goes down and the rent is unpaid, and she feels she’s coming to the end of things, and there’s nothing she can do to stop herself flying into space. My mind reaches back and there she is in a parallel universe, awaiting an alternative future, a second chance, a different kind of luck.”

By ripping off an idea from an American late-night comedy show, Television New Zealand had no luck at all in its attempt to shed light on the related subject of cyber-bullying. One could only hope that Ms Dawson would have appreciated the bungling black comedy of errors behind the headline “Fake abuse messages rattle TVNZ” : “TVNZ’s Breakfast show presenters have apologised for fake bullying messages read out by colleagues on national television. Veteran broadcaster Peter Williams and Seven Sharp reporter Dean Butler are being dealt with by TVNZ management after it was revealed messages they read in a segment on the Breakfast programme about online bullying were fake.” Someone clearly got the wrong end of the stick (Peter Williams doesn’t even have a twitter account) and TVNZ’s Chief Executive Kevin Kenrick went on the record to say that it was an honest mistake “It is crucial to our integrity as a news organisation that we don’t allow people to think that Peter’s contribution to the news story was a deliberate falsification intended to deceive viewers. I have spoken with Peter at length and I understand that the invitation to him to participate suggested a similarity with a show by American comic Jimmy Kimmel that featured celebrities reading out unkind tweets. This led him to believe, incorrectly, that the item was intended to be comic. “Peter had no involvement in the editorial decisions around the item and was unaware of the context until it went to air. At that point he immediately spoke up to say his contribution was invented.”

Although one has to accept this is not a case of malice in blunderland, given the enormous coverage afforded Ms Dawson and the circumstances surrounding her demise, particularly cyber-bullying, (which was the very impetus and idea behind the request to submit and then televise abusive tweets), this was a spectacular communication breakdown on the part of the state broadcaster. Again, the subject here is suicide and depression. If anything required due diligence and the highest standard of care, this was it. Unfortunately for TVNZ , the story became less about the news and all about the presenters. In the Herald, media commentator Brian Edwards rightly said “the incident might have been an “error of judgment” on their part, but was unacceptable.” In the same article, Lifeline chief executive Jo Denvir said she feared the fabricated messages might trivialise online bullying and suicide. “It is a very real phenomenon – you don’t actually need to make anything up,” she said. “Possibly they thought they were doing the right thing, but for those of us who work with suicide every day or the repercussions on families or people affected by suicide, this is not something that should be tampered with by making things up.”

On the subject of cyber-bullying, Troy McEwan had more luck in his piece ‘How to tell a troll from a stalker’ (NZ Herald). Offering perhaps the sanest advice of all, that trolls are best ignored, McEwan reports that ” Researchers from Winnipeg conducted a study earlier this month on the personality characteristics of internet trolls. In particular, they explored whether trolls reported the personality traits of: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism (grandiosity and entitlement), Psychopathy (lacking remorse and empathy) and Sadism (taking pleasure in the suffering of others). They found clear evidence that trolling is associated specifically with self-acknowledged sadism, and to a lesser degree with Machiavellianism. What’s more, people who reported sadism tended to troll because they found it to be pleasurable. As the researchers concluded: “Sadists just want to have fun” and the internet is their playground.” That legislation dealing with this serious issue should be in the hands of Parliament’s Queen of the Twitterverse, Judith Collins, is nothing if not darkly ironic.

Anyway, speaking of Machiavells, narcissists, psychopaths and sadists (and on a much brighter note), Act’s new leader Jamie Whyte scored a political own-goal of titanic proportions this week. In the interests of avoiding ‘intellectual corruption’, he sacrificed political credibility. ‘Act Leader Jamie Whyte stands by incest comments’ was the NZ Herald headline. “Dr Whyte told the Herald his response was based on his belief that: “I don’t think the state should intervene in consensual adult sex or marriage, but there are two very important elements here – consensual and adult”. However, Dr Whyte’s brave, logical, purist and principled stand on this politically-fatal subject lasted a mere 24 hours because next morning, the headline read ‘Act leader ‘regrets’ incest comments’. “I regret the comments, mainly because I feel I let the party down,” he said.” Indeed. To paraphrase Shortland Street’s immortal line, ‘You’re not in the Faculty Lounge now Dr Whyte.’

Things didn’t get much better for the good doctor at his debut conference as Party Leader, dubbed the “Thriller at the Villa”, as Andrea Vance reported in ‘Act’s New Man Jamie Whyte Speaks Up’ (Stuff). Asked if Act’s three strikes and you’re out for burglary policy “was an attempt to look tough on crime, after suggesting last week that incest between consenting adults should not be illegal, he said: “I’m not yet that clever a politician.”‘. Well, no disagreement with that one. But wait, there’s more. “Whyte spent the first four minutes of his speech explaining away the incest gaffe. “I was done over by the media,” he told the audience. “I made a blunder and I thought I had to say I blundered,” he told reporters afterwards. “I forgot briefly that I am the leader of a political party and not a philosophy lecturer…I was stupid for even getting involved.” No disagreement with that one, either. But wait, there’s still more. “He then attempted to avoid a fresh storm when asked if he takes a similar stance on polygamy, which he once hinted at in a column. “Look, I don’t want to start talking about this. The party has got absolutely no views on this – no I haven’t changed my personal view. But my personal views are irrelevant at this point.”. It must be galling for a man so bright (by his own constant admission) to concede stupidity for getting involved. And given the very, very, very long list of columns Jamie has written for prestigious publications such as the Wall Street Journal, full of his purist philosophical take on subjects such as incest and polygamy, it is doubtful the media will ever allow his personal views to become irrelevant. For better or worse, he was selected to be the fresh face of Act. This week, that face morphed into Uncle Fester. As Steve Braunias records in ‘The Secret Diary of Jamie Whyte’ (Stuff): “What plays in the bedroom, stays in the bedroom. As a philosopher, and also as newly elected leader of the Act Party, I’m proud to guard that bedroom door. That’s where you’ll find me in election year. When you think of Act, I want you to think of me outside a bedroom in which consenting adults commit acts of incest.”

Valiantly but in vain, Act’s new (old) campaign manager Richard Prebble tried to put out the fire. ” Mr Prebble, a founding member of Act, said he didn’t see Dr Whyte’s comments as a hindrance to his task of building (the currently zero) support for the party. “Actually in some ways it is useful because it shows Jamie Whyte is not a politician and I don’t think the public want politicians. Our enemies will attempt to distort that but I find the guy refreshing and new and I think the electorate is looking for something that’s fresh and new.” Whether incest is that something fresh and new the electorate is looking for remains to be seen. What is clear is that Colin Craig now has real competition.

We’re into the second month of election year and, as Vernon Small reports on Stuff “National is riding a wave of soaring optimism to start election year in pole position. A new Fairfax Media-Ipsos poll puts National on 49.4 per cent against 31.8 per cent for Labour and 10 per cent for the Greens. On those numbers National would win 64 seats in a 123-seat parliament – a lead of 10 seats over the combined Labour-Green vote and easily enough to govern alone before minor parties are taken into account.”

Despite (Colin Craig might say because of) recent allegations that he is “a shapeshifting reptilian alien ushering humanity towards enslavement”, Mr Key remains highly popular. So popular in fact that reading between John Armstrong’s lines in the NZ Herald, resistance is futile and we might as well call the election already won. “Taking him on mano a mano is audacious, iconoclastic and forlorn.”

At the Big Gay Out, as is customary at such events, many took him on mano a mano and the PM, as he is wont at such events, was happy to be taken. Fetchingly attired in a lemon pastel polo shirt and shorts, the PM was warm, friendly and verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry approachable, even downing several cups during a “beer pong” session. Next morning, he told the Herald he would “definitely” beat Labour Leader David Cunliffe at the drinking game. “Wouldn’t be any doubt about it,” the PM said. Not be outdone, Mr Cunliffe told media he would win a beer pong battle against Mr Key. “I could, I’m sure – if the moment arose – drink him under the table. I have body mass on my side,” the leader of the opposition said. Perhaps we should cancel the expensive and time-consuming election (with all those stupid votes to be counted and recounted) and just settle it, mano a mano, over a beer pong table. And if there was a tie? I guess they could always whip out the political genitals and at once resolve who has the majority.

But John Armstrong, who obviously knows about such things, alludes to the fact that the PM’s endowments are not merely financial. For example, “Mr Dotcom’s professional wrestling style has hit Mr Key’s Administration in the political genitals for nearly two years yet the Prime Minister’s approval soars on.” After two years of such pummelling, when most would be left with…well…’numb nuts’ I believe is the immortal phrase, the PM’s popularity soars on. Maybe that’s what we like in a politician?

Speaking of numb nuts, another rough beast, his hour come round again, slouched towards the Beehive this week. In the NZ Herald, the PM “hinted his tip-off about NZ First leader Winston Peter’s visits to the Dotcom mansion came from blogger Cameron Slater and said if a spy agency was found to be involved, as Peters has claimed, it would mean the end of his political career.” Luckily for the PM (Minister in charge of the SIS and GCSB), the intelligence came from a more reliable source. “He would not confirm it was Mr Slater, but said he did speak to Mr Slater “every so often,” and had called him earlier this week during which they briefly discussed Kim Dotcom. He said that did not mean he agreed with everything Mr Slater wrote on his blog. “I speak to lots of blogsters [sic].” Whether it’s true, or whether he’s just uneager to see (in Key’s words )”the end of myself as Prime Minister and the end of the Government.” or whether he’s just happy to roll in the mud, Slater said “if the Prime Minister says I’m a source, I guess I must have been.” Nothing could be more transparent, satisfactory or plausible.

When he’s not speaking to Mr Slater, it appears the PM is also taking time out to text his new BF Tony Abbott. As Tracy Watkins reports on Stuff, “A trans-Tasman romance appears to be blossoming following John Key’s second trip across the Tasman to meet up with his Australian counterpart,” Clearly his years as a monk have left Mr Abbott susceptible to bromance for his welcome was a gusher of geyser proportions. “Mr Abbott did not hold back, meanwhile, from expressing his admiration of Mr Key or his government’s reforms. Addressing a 600-strong business audience, Mr Abbott lavished so much praise on Mr Key he should have been blushing – brother, friend, soulmate, mentor and an inspiration were to name a few of his glowing tributes.” Bring me the baby wipes! The PM must have thought he was back at the Big Gay Pong Table. Winsomely, Key acknowledged their differences: “He’s more Right-wing than me; he can surf a lot better than I can; he’s deeply religious and I’m not; he’s a Rhodes scholar and I wasn’t.”

Sadly, these closer economic fellations proved to be all talk and “Mr Key left Australia with little to trumpet in the way of progress on the thorny expat question, or the Buy Australia campaign shutting out Kiwi exporters.” The PM’s new-found brother, friend and soul-mate has more important problems of his own to deal with at the moment, including the exodus of Holden and Toyota, the junk-bond status of Qantas, a drought and seemingly perpetual bush-fires. Not to mention Schappelle Corby. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Mike Carlton writes “As so often happens, the best the Prime Minister could do was to heap platitude upon banality.”

Poor Australia. Once, the lucky country. Once a country of which Men at Work sang of men who had work: the ‘land down under, where women glow and men plunder, can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover’ . And after Shane Jones extraordinary revelations in the House this week, Australians better take cover. Jones was talking ‘Tony’. Not Abbott. Soprano!

According to the Labour MP, the Australian-owned supermarket giant Countdown has been engaging in “Tony Soprano” extortion and racketeering practices, threatening to take New Zealand producers’ products off its shelves unless they pay back-dated cheques. “The Aussie driven owners and managers are saying to our Kiwi firms ‘you will hand over a cheque for my historic losses or you will never gain shelf space on the supermarket and if you breath one word of this we will blacklist you permanently’,” he said. “This monopolistic abuse, these threats and intimidation is driving our fellow Kiwis to their wits’ end. They have begun to fear now whether their businesses are viable,” To add fuel to the fire, as TVNZ reports, “the claims come amid an aggressive “buy Australian” campaign where a host of Kiwi products, such as fresh vegetables and cheese, have been stripped from Coles and Woolworth stores across Australia.”

As well-known flag-waver John Amstrong observed “Patriotism may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but no New Zealand politician has ever lost votes in criticising the diggers over the Ditch” and Jones’ “carefully conceived, astutely timed and precisely targeted blitzkrieg-style offensive” pulled no punches.”I only hope my fellow citizens, consumers from all around the country say ‘we will not acquiesce with the importation of this corrupt culture from the Australian shareholders into our business environ. Stop threatening, stop your Mafioso tactics against Kiwi businesses, treat them with a decent shot. Give them a fair go and stop threatening them that they’ll be bankrupted or blacklisted if they squeak, as to this extortionary behaviour. Sir, this verges on corruption. I’ll go to Pak n’ Save because the Aussies should pack up and go home.”

So much for closer economic fellations. Lip Service! Mouth-honour! So much for brothers, friends and soulmates. When New Zealand suppliers have to join a witness protection programme to testify against their ‘Strine’ masters, something is so rotten that no amount of Prime Ministerial grope-fests, platitudes or banality can cover the stench. And if we suffer under CER, how are we supposed to fare under the TPP?

I leave it to another great Aussie band, Icehouse:

‘So you look into the land and it will tell you a story A story ’bout a journey ended long ago If you listen to the motion of the wind in the mountains Maybe you can hear them talking like I do “. . they’re gonna betray, they’re gonna forget you are you gonna let them take you over this way . .” Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land.’

Legendary American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger died this week aged 94. His best-known songs included Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, Turn! Turn! Turn, a popularized version of the spiritual We Shall Overcome and, of course, If I Had a Hammer. Reading through the news this week, I know where he was coming from.

Grammys! Babies! Bullies! Flags! Death threats! Silly sausages! Racist clothes fights! Castles! Lecherous paparazzi! Go into hiding! Leave the country! Stay in the country! Mind the Gap! There is no Gap! The first week of the parliamentary year was so action-packed, distraction-packed even, that usual headline grabbers Colin Craig and Kim Dotcom couldn’t get a look-in. This was a week of opinions on everything and agreement on nothing. Helen Clark may become the next Secretary-General of the United Nations but New Zealand shows every symptom of one very disunited nation.

Speaking of the UN, “a United Nations Human Rights Council report says New Zealand needs to do more to combat issues such as child poverty, domestic violence and racial crimes. It’s just the second time New Zealand has been included in the report, which is issued every four years and provides recommendations on global human rights issues. This year’s document contains 155 recommendations for New Zealand, up from to 64 four years ago. The report said women and children are victims in the most severe cases of family violence, and men are responsible for two-thirds of the deaths of all children. Maori are over-represented both as perpetrators and victims.” (RNZ).

Put another way, under the stewardship of this government, problems associated with child poverty, domestic violence and racial crimes have more than doubled. Or, put another way, in spite of this government’s coalition with the Maori Party, Maori are over-represented both as perpetrators and victims in this sorry, if not shameful, statistic. And the government’s response? On the very same day the UN released its report, Justice Minister Judith Collins, fresh off the plane from Geneva, embarked on a tirade against Metira Turei: “If she’s going to stand there and talk about child poverty and how the National Party is out of touch with poverty when she is the one who spends a tremendous amount on clothes and talks to us about child poverty. I think she’s a hypocrite.” Readers can decide for themselves whether Ms Collins (and Ms Tolley’s) responses amounted to bullying or racism (they can also ponder how long it’s been since Judith has actually seen a sensitive wee sausage). What is clear is that it was not Metiria Turei who, that very same day, published an international report suggesting that National is out of touch with child poverty. Are those (presumably) well-dressed UN officials also hypocrites? Collins said last year on Twitter that a speech by Turei was “vile, wrong and ugly, just like her jacket today”. Child poverty, domestic violence and racial crimes: these are vile, wrong and ugly. Perhaps Collins should tweet less and do more about very serious issues.

When it comes to vile, wrong and ugly, right-wing blogger Cameron Slater’s attack on a recently-deceased young man on the West Coast was shocking and sickening. Hackers brought down his website and Slater started to receive death-threats. “What we’ve got here is a basic, locked-down, water-tight case of cyber bullying,” he said. “These people are acting like vigilantes over a perceived slight to their community and it’s actually proving the point that there’s seriously a feral underclass in New Zealand.” Slater has a following in this country, including Judith Collins and when he talks about a ‘feral underclass’, one wonders how many heads nod approvingly in agreement. If Slater speaks for the Right, I am reminded in the strongest terms of why I’ll be voting for the Left.

From the bottom of the barrel to the cream of the crop. At the Grammys, Lorde wowed the world. Together with Joel Little, she created a song and a sound that began life on the internet, a free contribution of creativity, and for this, she has been rightly rewarded with international superstardom. If ever there was an example of the web’s true purpose and potential, this was it, a pure antidote to the poisonous rabidity of Slater. As Fran O’Sullivan writes in the NZ Herald “In an interview last year, Lorde spoke about how she had always written and read and how that was a part of her that was “super important”. “And it’s a really good outlet for me to be able to say whatever I’m thinking and whatever it is that I’m trying to process. So, I don’t think it’s too weird. And I also think people my age these days … with the internet, you know, you can be making beats out of your bedroom and be a superstar.”

Of course, superstardom doesn’t come without consequence, including unsought advice. Charlotte Dawson used Lorde’s complaint about the media scrum she encountered at Auckland Airport as a licence to urge the star to relocate: “Unless you’re very mediocre, you need to get out of there.” According to Weekend Herald columnist Paul Thomas, “Dawson needn’t concern us unduly. Even by the debased standards of celebrity culture, she’s the personification of mediocrity. But things are happening very fast for the phenomenal Lorde. While she seems determined to resist being sucked into the maw of the celebrity machine, it will be hard to stop the hype getting out of hand and prevent people like Dawson from piggy-backing on her runaway fame.”

Thomas then goes on to say Lorde’s success gave the country another reason to change the flag. “Who can possibly believe that a young, multicultural, Pacific nation, home to a 17-year-old double Grammy Award winner called Ella Yelich-O’Connor, doesn’t need or deserve its own flag, as opposed to a hybrid of other peoples’?” Who indeed? “There are only three things wrong with our flag. The presence of the Union Jack suggests that this country is a British possession, the last, loneliest relic of an otherwise vanished empire. Plenty of people around the world have pretty much this impression, and who can blame them? The fact that it looks just like the Australian flag suggests we’re an extension of our neighbour: Greater Tasmania. Again, plenty of people around the world have pretty much this impression, and who can blame them? And because our flag is so busy saluting other countries, it says absolutely nothing about who we are.”

Most politicians seem to agree. United Future leader Peter Dunne says it is not appropriate that New Zealand continues to fly a flag which included the Union Jack. “I think what we’ve got at the moment is anachronistic,” he said. “I think it smacks of British imperialism and we’ve given that away a long time ago, and I think we should have something that reflects our own identity.”

So, if it is time for this young, multicultural, Pacific nation, home to a 17-year-old double Grammy Award winner, long free of British imperialism to have a new flag, is it also not time it became a republic? To change the flag without changing the constitution is merely an exercise in rebranding: a political distraction not a declaration of independence. Unless we are prepared to seriously conjure with that thorny issue, we should leave the flag as it stands and confine election-year debate to issues that matter.

If recent reports are to be believed, the PM is going to call an early election. In fact, we could be less than 250 days away from a new Government. Or at least a new-look Government.

According to the NZ Herald “Sources say Key wants to hold the election before November’s G20 leaders’ meeting in Brisbane and Apec Summit in Beijing. He will also want to avoid clashing with home All Black games in August and early September, the final Bledisloe Cup test on October 18, and Labour Weekend, the final weekend of October. Pundits are betting on September 27 or one of the first two Saturdays in October.” Labour leader David Cunliffe said: “I wouldn’t rule out that National will go considerably earlier than that if they feel desperate.” If you ask me, the PM will want to shamelessly cash in on the Royal visit in April so I wouldn’t be surprised if he sent the country to the polls as early as protocol allows: in July. Why wait? After all, campaigns are all about shaking hands and kissing babies and if you get a chance to kick things off with shaking a royal hand and kissing a royal baby, you’d be a mug to miss it. And the PM is no mug. When things look tight, as they do, a royal seal of approval could make all the difference. So why wait?

National already seems to be working to a tight timeframe, ‘refurbishing’ faces and contemplating coalition partners. Nearly 10% of its existing MPs have already jumped (or been pushed) into the political afterlife, making way for fresh meat. Gone with the wind are Katrina Shanks, John Hayes, Colin King, Cam Calder, Paul Hutchison, Chris Tremain, Chris Auchinvole, Phil Heatley, Kate Wilkson, Lindsay Tisch and Eric Roy. As might be expected, the new blood is infused with blue blood.

As Vernon Small reports in the NZ Herald, John Hayes ‘decision’ (ahem) to step aside in Wairarapa “opens the way for multimillionaire investment banker Alastair Scott, Mr Scott is a former Credit Suisse First Boston managing director, who owns the Matahiwi Estate winery near Masterton. He first indicated his interest in the seat before the 2011 election, but Mr Hayes refused to step aside then.” For 2014, it would seem it was an offer poor John could not refuse. “Party insiders have drawn parallels between Mr Scott and leader John Key, who was head-hunted for National after a successful career in international finance. Mr Scott returned to New Zealand in 1997 after a stint as a top manager at Credit Suisse in London and Tokyo, where he said he was responsible for trading “derivative products in the Asian time zones”. A trader of “derivative products in the Asian time zones”? Hmmm. If I were Judith Collins or Simon Bridges, I’d be very, very wary of such a parallel man for he might harbour parallel ambitions. But that’s a rumour for another day.

High-fliers and Asian-time-zone-derivative-traders aside, National still needs at least one viable coalition partner to win. Recently-outed ‘knuckle-flicker’ Colin Craig can certainly generate headlines but not necessarily of the sort that wins lots of votes. Commenting on its own headline, the NZ Herald states that “Headlines such as “Colin Craig: I smack my kids” might not entice National to get too close to him. His comments may be naive rather than accurate. He thinks the politically safe answer to make when asked a silly question, such as whether he believes the moon landings were faked, is to say he is not sure. But that sort of naivety can be crucified in an election campaign. He will make it even more difficult for National to help him if naivety traps him in non-negotiable positions. He is reported to have made the repeal of the anti-smacking law a condition of his support. He needs to be careful to go no further. If he is drawn to describe exactly what forms of physical discipline he wants the law to permit he could find himself in a lonely place on the political stage.” We can only hope that Colin refrains from more specificity with regard to his views on physical discipline.

Speaking of discipline, the Herald on Sunday editorialises that “voters in Epsom have been urged to use their electorate vote “strategically” to give the centre-right at least one more seat than it strictly deserves. The polls are finally balanced between National and a possible Labour-led coalition, so National is anxious to repeat this rort in Epsom and maybe in a few other seats. It is so anxious that, as we disclosed last Sunday, campaign manager Steven Joyce sounded out Rodney Hide about standing for Epsom again.” Sadly for Steven, like Michelle Boag and Matthew Hooten, Rodney said no. But have no fear. “It never pays to write off an astute political party on the grounds that its nominal leader and sole MP has been discredited, it languishes near zero in opinion polls and lacks any visible life.” writes the Herald’s John Roughan. “The residents of that rich blue seat consisting of Parnell, Remuera, Epsom and Mt Eden have given their electorate vote to Act at successive elections now, not because they particularly admired Rodney Hide or had high hopes for the second coming of John Banks.” They voted Act, rorts and all, so National could win.

Towards which, like the Republicans in The Simpsons, the great and the good behind Act recently gathered at squillionaire Alan Gibbs’ country estate to nominate its next dose of Epsom salts. In the Herald, Adam Bennett reports it’s a three-way race: “Act President and former MP John Boscawen says he will seek the party’s nomination to stand in Epsom at this year’s general election, and is also seeking to become party leader.”We must rebuild our previous support and parliamentary representation and I believe that I am the best person to lead the party into the 2014 election,” Mr Boscawen said in a statement. Along with Mr Boscawen former philosophy lecturer and currency trader Jamie Whyte has confirmed he will seek the Epsom nomination and leadership while former John Banks staffer David Seymour has confirmed he will seek the Epsom nomination as well.”

In the Sunday Star-Times, Whyte positions himself as the ” brave but long-term choice. The party, he says, needs rebranding, “somewhat, well, a lot actually”. While he may now be the leadership outsider, he says he’s the one capable of leading that long-term reinvigoration back to the heady days of nine parliamentary seats; he fears they have been seen by too many as “mean-spirited”. To reach that target of a 5 per cent vote share, they must communicate their ideas better, although he admits they are still not chasing the popular vote; ACT voters, he says, are clever, “not typical people on the whole, a little bit more thoughtful, more interested in ideas”. The initial target, however, is two seats (which would require a constituency victory in Epsom and at least 1.5 per cent of the overall party vote). They would be “seriously f . . ed up” if they can’t achieve that.”

Ah, those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer! The holiday hiatus is a time for rest and relaxation, a time to recharge and reflect.

The pundits have published their reviews of 2013: the winners and losers, saints and sinners, snakes and ladders.Most agree that Len Brown, John Banks and Peter Dunne had less-than-stellar years. Colin Craig emerged from the (some say lunatic) fringe as a potential political mover and shaker. Simon Bridges rabidly fanatical performance on Campbell Live in defence of Big Oil shed much heat but little light on an important environmental issue,winning him a dubious place in the annals of TV interviews. David Cunniliffe replaced David Shearer, giving the Opposition a credible, coherent voice and at least a shot at winning the 2014 Election. Assets were sold and we’re not much richer ( if not actually poorer). GCSB Bills were passed and we’re (so far) none the wiser. The Marriage Equality Bill easily passed into law, proving that New Zealand can still at times hold its political head high. At the same time, the Sky City Convention Centre Bill passed into law by the hairiest of margins, proving that we still have cause to hang our political head in shame.

By way of preview, aside from an election, we have much to look forward to this year, including John Banks’ and Kim Dotcom’s respective court appearances, more leaks from Edward Snowden regarding New Zealand’s role in international surveillance and, somewhat controversially, a royal tour. As Fran O’Sullivan opines in the NZ Herald, the PM ” is good at managing circuses. His Government brilliantly leveraged the Rugby World Cup in 2011. Key will also leverage the visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (and Prince George). It won’t be the only star turn before the election (which is expected to be early).”

In 2014, the Government is scheduled to post its first surplus, all $86m of it, and will certainly seek to run on its oversight of what HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham describes as the “rock star economy among the OECD”. In the NZ Herald, Bernard Hickey reports that the new year “is shaping up as a stellar one for growth. ANZ’s survey this week showed businesses are the most confident they’ve been since 1994 when the economy was growing at an annual rate of 7 per cent. ANZ’s composite indicator of business and consumer confidence suggested our economy could be growing by 5 per cent by the middle of next year. Wholesale milk powder prices are up more than 50 per cent this year and Fonterra has forecast production will rise 6.4 per cent this season. Our Terms of Trade, which measures the power of our exports to buy imports, are the best they’ve been since 1974. The $40 billion rebuild in Canterbury is cranking into gear and Auckland house building is also starting to wind up. Home owners feel about $65 billion richer than they did last Christmas because their house values are up 10 per cent. The ANZ business confidence survey showed businesses are keener to employ people than they’ve been since 1994. After nearly six grinding years of stop-start recession and timid growth the economy seems set to finally take off.” All good then.

Not so fast. Things aren’t quite as rosy as they might seem. Hickey goes on to say “we appear rich and happy again, largely because we have become reliant on the export of one product to one country. This week’s GDP and trade figures showed milk powder exports to China have been the driving force behind economic growth surging to its best level in three years. China is now our largest export market and trading partner ahead of Australia. Although we are not as reliant now on China as we were on Britain in 1974, the indirect reliance is almost as large because our second-largest trading partner, Australia, is also reliant on China.”

Given that all our economic eggs are in one Chinese dairy basket, Fonterra’s fake botulism scare takes on enormous importance. The PM has yet to travel to China on a mission to restore confidence in brand New Zealand. The stakes could not be higher. I hope he’s well-rested.

Towards which, some might have leisurely whiled away New Year’s morning reading the NZ Herald’s ‘My Bach: John Key’: Presumably part of an ongoing series (and not just blatant propaganda), the article featured a large photograph of the PM “posing in front of the house in shorts and T-shirt for the Herald on Sunday in 2007”. Of course, the PM was not available for a new pic because this year, he was not holed up in Omaha but holing up with President Obama in Oahu .

According to the Huffington Post, “the golf outing put Key in rarified company. Obama is an avid golfer, but prefers to limit his playing partners to a close circle of friends and advisers. Among those who have also scored invitations to play with Obama in the past are former President Bill Clinton and House Speaker John Boehner.” . Rarified indeed! The two world leaders (and I use that term in its widest sense) apparently discussed issues of mutual interest and regional security. Whether Kim Dotcom or the TPPA were mentioned, we’ll never know. But we could guess. One respondent to the Huffington piece wrote that “New Zealand is one of the five English speaking nations, partners in crime, who spy on everyone in the whole world!” Surely not! For the PM, a photo-op paints a thousand words and in an election year, cosy shots on the golf green with the Prez are gold, usurped in value only by close-ups with a royal baby. Something to look forward to I suppose.

Yuletide approaches. Nevertheless, it’s been a trying time for the PM. From SkyCity to John Banks to Colin Craig to asset sales to even the Springbok Tour, ghosts of Christmas past, present and future have come to roost.

Explosively, though unsurprisingly for some, Sky City has been caught up in a major drug bust / money-laundering investigation. As reported in the NZ Herald: “SkyCity Casino is at the centre of a $120 million drug bust with key players in the alleged international crime syndicate spending millions of dollars in the VIP lounge.” This is of course the same SkyCity that wined and dined the PM for a Convention Centre in exchange for an expanded gambling licence. And the same SkyCity that features prominently in the John Banks election-donation-declaration court case (John Banks being the same John Banks who voted for the enabling SkyCity Convention Centre legislation…but that’s another story). Should we be shocked? Well, according to the Greens’ gambling spokesperson Denise Roche, “Casinos are an engine of crime, so it’s not surprising that another [alleged] money laundering ring has been exposed.” It gets worse. “Included in the list of gambling concessions gifted to SkyCity Casino in their agreement with the Government to build a convention centre is an increase in ‘ticket-in, ticket-out technology’ and machines that can accept denominations of $20 and higher…’Ticket-in, ticket-out technology is one of the best ways to increase money laundering. It enables anonymous gambling, which makes problem gambling easier and is directly linked to money laundering overseas,’ she said.’ And it gets worse. “The Department of Internal Affairs advised that there were serious questions about how easy this technology would make it for money launderers to use the casino to ‘clean’ the proceeds of crime, yet the Government still allowed for this to happen.” In his dealings with SkyCity, has the PM merely enabled and expanded institutional money-laundering, in exchange for a free building? Does an engine of crime need more oil? These are troubling questions.

Speaking of trouble, John Archibald Banks was committed to trial by a High Court Judge. Struggling to hold back tears, Banks announced that he was going to stand down in March. “Half a century ago on a wet Friday afternoon, I witnessed my mother and father get sentenced to very long terms of prison and taken away. I stood outside the High Court on that Friday afternoon aged 17 absolutely committed to a lifetime of hard work, honest endeavour and public service to try and balance the family ledger.” Psychoanalysis aside, Banks’ departure from the political landscape has implications, especially for the PM. As Gordon Campbell writes, “Something more than John Banks’ worthless hide is now at stake though, in the wake of this week’s court ruling that he should stand trial for electoral fraud, allegedly committed during his 2010 mayoral campaign. Any honourable person would have resigned from Parliament – or at least stepped aside from casting any votes in Parliament in the interim – once the privately launched legal action began to get traction in the courts. Moreover, any honourable government would have refused to rely on Banks’ discredited vote to pass its legislative agenda, and especially the SkyCity casino legislation at the heart of the court action, where a clear conflict of interest existed with regard to Banks. Instead, the Key government has been willing to rely on Banks’ vote in Parliament, and will continue to do so in 2014 for as long as it conceivably can.”

After that, if the PM has to rely on Colin Craig and the Conservatives, then, according to John Armstrong : “John Key, you have a problem. National’s willingness to help Craig get a seat in Parliament has been based on the hope he might bring two or three other MPs with him on his coat-tails. Or should that be chem-trails. However, when someone who conceivably could end up being a minister following next year’s election is unsure whether he believes man has walked on the Moon, it is time to press the “whoop-whoop, pull-up” warning button on the dangers of potential coalition with a party which might also believe Paul McCartney is dead and Elvis Presley faked his own death.” Nothing marginalises so quickly as the label ‘conspiracy theorist’. In Armstrong’s view, “Craig’s clanger is the kind of career-defining and sometimes career-destroying own-goal that sticks in the public’s mind.” Of course, his lunar musings might just be attempts to “wind up the media”, as the PM has positively spun. Having embraced John Banks, train crash that he proved to be, how open are the voters to Colin’s open mind on world history? For the PM, again, another troubling question.

Meanwhile, across the nation, over 1.2 million people have responded to the question ” “Do you support the Government selling up to 49% of Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Power, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand?”. In the Sunday Star-Times, Rod Oram provides some last minute guidance for those still to vote: ” The Government said the sales proceeds would reduce its borrowing for infrastructure such as schools and hospitals. In accounting terms, though, the Government is reducing both assets and borrowing, so the net impact is negligible. It is also getting less money than it hoped. Even if it manages to sell Genesis Energy next year, its latest midpoint estimate of the proceeds is $4.8bn, down 25 per cent from the $6.1bn in the Budget in May. Worse, it is selling income-producing assets and reinvesting in non-income producing assets. Treasury estimates forgone dividends over the next five years will be $810m, while interest costs will be reduced by $780m. So the Government will be $30m worse off over five years because of the floats.” $30m worse off doesn’t sound so good! But wait, there’s more: “The full negative financial impact is much higher when other factors such as the cost of the sales and the Government’s reduced share in the SOEs profits are factored into the Government’s accounts. The Government estimated the sales’ cost at a maximum of 2 per cent of the floated companies’ revenues. It is running at double that for the first two floats, even on their barebones costs. The Greens estimate the true cost is double again, at around $250m for Mighty River Power and Meridian.” Double the sales’ cost??? That doesn’t sound too good either. Still, it comes: “The Bolger government’s sale of Contact in 1999 attracted 225,000 retail investors. Treasury hoped MRP would attract the same number, but only 113,000 stumped up. Only 62,000 bought Meridian shares despite the bargain price, instalment payment and big dividend; of those, only 16,000 were new investors. The shares of MRP, Meridian and Air New Zealand are all trading below their float prices.” Only 16 000 new investors??? All trading below their float prices??? And to cap it off, “Since the Government announced the SOE floats two years ago, the NZX 50 has risen by 48 per cent. Over the same time, the existing electricity stocks, Contact and TrustPower, have fallen 11 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively, with a lot of the turmoil created by the SOE floats. This has wiped $505m from their combined market cap. If they had merely tracked the market, they would be worth $3.4bn more. On top of that, investors in the three SOE floats so far have lost $720m.” $505m wiped??? $702m lost???? Has the country’s portfolio manager’s Midas touch become a spider’s touch? Another troubling question.

Nelson Mandela passed this week. Since the 1981 Springbok Tour, New Zealand has had a unique relationship with the great man. As John Minto is quoted in the NZ Herald, Mandela told Dame Cath Tizard that ‘when prisoners on Robben Island heard protests had forced the Waikato-Springbok game to be called off, it was “like the sun came out”’. At his state funeral, perhaps the largest in history, New Zealand will be represented by the PM accompanied by Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples, Leader of the Opposition David Cunliffe, former Prime Minister Jim Bolger, and former Foreign Minister and Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Sir Don McKinnon. Many have said it is John Minto who should be attending and not John Key, given the PM’s seeming inability to recall where he was or what he thought about a seminal and searing event in New Zealand’s recent past. Perhaps we should not blame him. After all, as discussed, he has a lot on his mind.

With less than a year to go before the next election, things are getting down and dirty. It’s a busy time and, in more ways than one, the PM, honest broker that he is, is taking care of business.

Getting re-elected is perhaps his most pressing piece of business to care of. His current mandates, Act and United Future (aka John Banks and Peter Dunne) step closer everyday into the twilight’s last gleaming (for Banks that could include a spell in the slammer) and many could mistake the Maori Party for a wake. Luckily, or not, all is not lost. In the form of Colin Craig and the Conservatives, hope is at hand, as if heaven sent.

Although the newly released electoral boundaries didn’t quite deliver Colin a seat on a plate, he still has the money and the means (if not the motive and the policies) to make it into Parliament next year and take his place on the right hand of National. As this improbability metastasises into a distinct possibility, Colin has been out on the traps, meeting and greeting, flesh-pressing, shopping at Pak’N’Save and generally beguiling all he meets. ‘Who is this Colin Craig?’ has been the question on the lips of many. Well, here are a few answers.

According to the Herald on Sunday “If Colin Craig is the answer to John Key’s problem, then National is in trouble.” “Troublingly dim”, Craig “doesn’t believe in evolution, doesn’t accept anthro-pogenic climate change, and blames New Zealand’s woes on its “promiscuous young women. It is this man, this limp, anaemic excuse for a leader, whom John Key is grooming as his new coalition partner. Key is desperate to find anyone to take the place of the foundering Act, United Future and Maori parties – but really?” Yes, really. An earlier Herald editorial has read the chicken entrails and apparently “the stars are aligning for Craig and his untainted party brand.” In this context, ‘untainted’ could mean anything from ‘untested’ to ‘unsullied’ to ‘unburdened with scientific evidence’. Nevertheless, although Colin and the Conservatives may not be ideal, they would certainly be ‘serviceable’. In this context, ‘serviceable’ could mean anything.

Be that as it may, it looks like Colin is here to stay. Under the headline ‘Conservative Party – Crazy or Credible’, the Sunday-Star Times notes that “in politics, you know you’ve made it into the national consciousness when someone creates a webpage of animals that resemble you. Now there is a “Weasels That Look Like Colin Craig” tumblr page, it’s clear the Conservative Party leader has arrived.” Perhaps a dubious honour but such is life in politics. Anyway, some people like him. ‘Senior citizens appear to like Craig’s morally conservative views combined with an anti-asset sales stance. “A lot of them think I’m a lovely young fellow, and I get told I’m a good boy! I don’t mind, if they want to think of me as some sort of adopted son.” When it comes to winning votes, who wouldn’t want to be thought of as lovely, young, good and, if it helped, adopted? Perhaps Colin isn’t so crazy after all.

As Andrea Vance puts it, ‘Nice and nutty’ might be the better phrase: “Colin Craig in the flesh is markedly different from the barking mad, fundamentalist portrayed in the media. He’s mild-mannered, ridiculously polite, curiously endearing and geeky in a Don Brash way. He does say and do rather daft things. Like when he referred to powhiri as a bare-bottomed native making threatening gestures and the legalisation of gay marriage as a failure of democracy. Or that time he had 20,000 leaflets sent to John Key’s Helensville constituents claiming locals said the Prime Minister was too gay to be their MP. The thing is, these outrageous gestures and statements get him on the telly.” And let’s face it, that’s what it’s all about. If over 100 000 Aucklanders could vote for John Palino, pure name recognition could get Colin over the line, irrespective of the calibre and quality of his policies and fellow Conservative candidates. There are still a few hoops. “So far, all the signals point to him being nuttier than squirrel poo. Craig must now prove that he can firstly pull in the votes, and secondly, won’t make unreasonable demands when in Government.” That strength of pull and the reasonability of demands of a man who is nuttier than squirrel poo could shape the future of a nation. It wouldn’t be the first time in history.

Meanwhile, the PM, true to form and honest broker that he is, has been taking care of Business and, if your business happened to be Air New Zealand, Anadarko or New Zealand Oil and Gas, you might or might not felt taken care of.

For their failure to compensate the Pike River families “a measly $3 million”, Key and his Cabinet have been widely and soundly condemned. For Colin Espiner, “it’s more than astounding. It’s a gross insult to the families and an admission that the Government really hasn’t learned that much from the whole tragedy. Cabinet’s excuse – that it would be setting a precedent by paying out court-ordered compensation on behalf of a private company – is risable on several levels.” On this issue, the PM’s much-lauded ‘political radar’ or ‘political antenna’ appear to have deserted him and all commentators concur he has displayed an ‘uncharacteristically tin ear’ . Some might dispute how uncharacteristic Key’s meeting the needs of big business over (in this case, bereaved) people really is. In fact, some might say this is completely consistent with the morals of an investment banker. If only morals had entered in to it. As Fran O’Sullivan pointed out in the NZ Herald “The extent of Mr Key’s disconnection has been underlined by Labour Minister Simon Bridges’ revelations about the Cabinet discussion on the compensation issue. It had been brief and the moral argument for a payout had not even been raised, he said.” .

Simon Bridges also features prominently in Gareth Morgan’s blistering piece on the Government’s oil exploration programme, which Anadarko begins in earnest this very day: “The supercilious assurances from the Minister of Energy and Resources that the public need not be concerned and that the economic bounty outweighs any worries about environmental destruction have been derisory and have served only to highlight the Government’s unwillingness to be held accountable on the deep sea oil issue. There has been a trend with the Key Government to push for economic windfalls from resource extraction while winding back environmental protection, and this is just the latest demonstration of that preference.” The “deep sea oil adventures of the Government” should be opposed until the Government provides an honest and transparent business case. The cheerleading from Bridges, wherein the wonderful benefits only are espoused, is an intellectual embarrassment and constitutes a direct, up-your-nose insult to the intelligence of New Zealanders.”

Having offended the morals and intellect of the nation, one would hope that at least the Government has got a handle on our business affairs. After all, isn’t that this Government’s greatest claim to fame? But alas and alack, the disappointing performance of the first three asset sales programmes, including Air New Zealand, may prevent the Genesis float: “Brian Gaynor, executive director of Milford Asset Management, said the performance of the three asset sales was “terribly disappointing” and not helpful for encouraging investors into the sharemarket. Gaynor said he did not believe there was a “hope in hell” of the Government going ahead with the sale of Genesis Energy – the last asset left it its sales programme.”

Speaking of hope in hell, Bernard Hickey’s NZ Herald piece ‘A Faustian Pact We Cannot Accept” makes for sobering reading. “Even with best practice mitigation, the large-scale conversion of more land to dairy farming will generally result in more degraded fresh water,” the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Jan Wright, released in a must-read report this week on land use and nutrient pollution. Hickey goes on: “Think about this. No matter how many waterways are fenced off and how much effluent is spread on paddocks, the problem gets worse. Even 100 per cent compliance with Fonterra’s Sustainable Dairying Accord signed this year does not solve the problem. This is saying New Zealanders must accept the permanent poisoning of our rivers if we are to grow our economy through dairy exports, which is our main strategy at the moment. It is a Faustian bargain with four legs, a tail and whole lot of cud-chewing. It says New Zealanders must accept that dairy farmers are going to privatise the profits of permanently damaging our rivers while the losses are socialised.”

A Faustian Pact? Or just taking care of business? After all the assets are sold, after all the Casino Conference Centres have been built, after all the oil has been extracted, after every blade of grass has been eaten and all the fresh waterways have been polluted, what then? In this scenario, who is nuttier than squirrel poo? You, the voter, must soon decide.

Barely a week after enduring the graphic, politically suspect romp and circumstance of ‘blackmail, corruption and the dirtiest political scandal this country has ever seen’, we have been deeper plunged into a fetid, profoundly disturbing moral pit. For two years, a gang of teenage sexual predators calling themselves “Roast Busters” bragged about their under-aged conquests on Facebook, “strutting their stuff and shaming their victims.” And, to date, they have got away with it. The situation, ‘grotesque’ and ‘horrific’, raises many questions which, as the NZ Herald’s Toby Manhire forcefully argues, ‘scream for answers’.

Manhire captures the mood of the nation: the behaviour is ‘appalling, stomach churning, almost certainly criminal. And so the most immediately alarming question is this: if it prompted anything like the same reaction two years ago, why didn’t those who knew about it then make it stop?’. So why didn’t they? Police reassurances were swift, glib but, most disconcertedly, factually inaccurate : the problem was a lack of complaint. “None of the girls have been brave enough to make formal statements to us so we can take it to a prosecution stage or even consider a prosecution stage.” That would be a satisfactory response. If it was true. But it wasn’t. “Four of them had come forward in 2011 and 2012. Four of them. Three were 13, one 15. One had made a full and formal complaint.’ Manhire is left with the ‘the clear impression, not of a police force with tied hands, but sitting on them. Or worse. The manner by which all of this has emerged leaves the stench of a cover-up.”

So we are left with many questions: about the perpetrators, their parents, about the integrity of the Police, about how we place and process rape and its prosecution in this country, about the role of the internet, pornography, alcohol, about the media and its obligations and restraints in this most sensitive area of the criminal system and, at the top of any list, if the victims of such crimes have been treated with the utmost dignity and respect.

Confidence in the Police is plummeting.: “A couple of days ago, it might have been possible to accept police assurances that the investigation was unaffected by the fact that the son of a police officer was linked to the predatory gang. Today, it seems naive to take that at face value.” Both the Minister and the Commissioner have expressed their ‘disappointment’ but at this late stage of the game, their ‘disappointment’ doesn’t quite cut it. I get disappointed every week I don’t win Lotto. The question that screams to be answered is this: “is the West Auckland horror show an isolated case or part of something wider, systemic, even institutional?” Mrs Tolley and her Commissioner seem ill-equipped, even unwilling to address this elephant in the room. That amidst this firestorm, the Police should take time out to threaten the editor of a Daily Blog for his satiric parody of their hopeless inaction is another scandal for another day’s discussion.

It’s impossible to disagree with Manhire when he concludes that a commission of inquiry is warranted. “Without it, confidence in the police can only erode further, and those who have been sexually abused will increasingly conclude that going to the police is a bad idea.”

As if these upsetting revelations were not enough, other extraordinary, even incredible events came to light this week, raising more questions that scream for answers.

Those searching for a metaphor for the state of the nation, look no further: it sailed into Wellington Harbour last week minus a propeller. On a routine passenger service from Picton, the Interislander Ferry Aratere sheared the steel shaft which connects the engine to the starboard propeller, sending it to the bottom of the Tory Channel. “This is a very unusual event, so there’s no assumed understanding of what could have caused it,” said KiwiRail chief executive Jim Quinn in a confidence-draining statement.

Given the notoriously treacherous waters of the Cook Strait, one would hope that the Government would ensure that the ships that most regularly make the crossing, bearing precious cargo, would be sea-worthy. But no. Nautical historians could probably count on the fingers of one hand the instances of a ship of this size, on a routine passenger voyage, suddenly and near catastrophically losing a propeller and its shaft.

“The ferry has two propellers, so it was still able to cross the strait safely” spinned Mr Quinn. “It was safe. It safely sailed back, and it was all within its design capabilities even with an extreme event such as this”. Those with a passing familiarity of New Zealand disasters will appreciate that the Ferry’s ‘safe return within its design capabilities’ was more a matter of extreme good luck. Had the incident occurred during a storm, we could have been dealing with the aftermath of another Wahine.

Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee wants answers: “what occurred to cause the prop to fall off the boat?” Well Mr Brownlee, this too is a question that screams for answers: near-catastrophes like this don’t just happen. Propellers just don’t fall off boats.

Instructively, the Aratere has experienced a series of problems over the years. “There have been three engine failures, in 1999, 2000 and 2011, a steering fault in 2004, and the ship was ordered to stop operating twice after safety issues were found – once in 2005 then again in 2011.” Winston Peters believes a 30-metre extension to the middle of the ship two years ago is to blame: “It porpoises through the water, it’s not rigid, it flexes. Now if you want to see equipment go wrong like shafts and propellers, have that going on in your boat.” Peters has called for KiwiRail to “front up to a public inquiry into the shambles surrounding the ship: experienced KiwiRail staff had warned management not to lengthen the ship during its upgrade because of the problems it would cause, but it was sent to Singapore regardless” he said. “It would be interesting for KiwiRail to disclose just who went to Singapore, and check their level of expertise in extending ships.” Kiwirail says that is “just rumour, unfounded based on any facts”. Perhaps. But the unassailable fact remains that somewhere at the bottom of the Tory Channel lies a propeller that just fell off a ship. Why? How? I scream for answers.

Addressing two major issues now confronting the Government, Bryan Gaynor elaborates on the nautical theme: “Two events this week, the Mighty River Power annual meeting and the Commerce Commission’s decision on Chorus, clearly illustrate that serious questions need to be asked about the Crown’s transparency and decision-making processes. The Government has several similarities to a luxury cruise liner that has no captain. The Crown has the equivalent of a navigator, a chief engineer, a purser and a passenger services manager but no one on deck to make sure the vessel is sailing a consistent course.”

Gaynor’s analysis is damning and he asks many questions, all of which scream for answers: “It appears the Treasury, which is more like a chief purser than a captain, made most of the important MRP decisions, particularly the IPO price. But it is not usually a big-picture entity, it is in charge of the Crown’s purse strings with a perceived mandate to maximise the sale price. It appears that the Treasury allocated 347 million Meridian Energy shares to overseas institutions but gave only 160 million to New Zealand institutions, including KiwiSaver funds. If this is correct, why was there such a strong bias towards overseas investors? What were the criteria for giving SkyCity additional gambling facilities if it builds a convention centre in Auckland? Why are the owners of the Tiwai Pt aluminium smelter receiving a special payment? Why were investors in South Canterbury Finance bailed out when investors in other finance companies suffered substantial losses?” I scream for answers.

The more Gaynor continues, the more at sea the Government seems: “Chorus is looking more like a sister ship, with the Commerce Commission, Communications Minister Amy Adams and Prime Minister John Key’s ultra-fast broadband programme wrestling for control of the steering wheel. The problem is that the Chorus debacle could overflow to Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy’s share prices as overseas investors begin to realise that there are huge regulatory and inconsistent government policy decision risks associated with New Zealand. Investors are now realising that there are huge risks associated with the current Administration because it doesn’t appear to have anyone at the helm steering a straight and consistent course as far as major business decisions are concerned.”

So, after five years of this Government and its promises of a brighter future, the crux of the matter: the question that truly screams for an answer is this: where is the captain? Who is at the helm? According to the PM, “I do a lot of going around the country opening things and cutting ribbons and being the kind of face of the party that’s interacting with the public. And Bill is doing a lot of the long term thinking, heavy-lifting and policy design, all the things that involve ministers … I’m kind of the retail face.” Enough said.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/11/11/the-scream-for-answers/feed/12Crimes and Misdemeanourshttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/10/28/crimes-and-misdemeanours/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/10/28/crimes-and-misdemeanours/#commentsSun, 27 Oct 2013 18:09:44 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=35045
We live in unprecedented times. We have ‘crossed the Rubicon’ to reach ‘a new low’. Politically-speaking, we now swim in unchartered waters and the only thing we know for sure is that they are shark-infested.

One scandal at a time. Len Brown had an affair. This I do know for sure. Online, in print, on television and on talkback, in extensive and explicit detail, I saw more than I needed to see and heard more than I needed to hear. My eyes need rinsing. My ears need washing. I’d never thought of Len in that way and don’t thank him for conjuring the mental image of his naked cavorting. But I don’t condemn him. This is a marital matter, not a mayoral one. He cheated on his wife, not the voters. And that’s where this sex scandal runs out of steam. Adultery may be a sin but it’s not a crime. Unlike blackmail. Or election fraud for that matter. By contrast, these are very serious issues and their implications for the safety and sanctity of our democracy are profound.

After the tidal wave of tittle-tattle, the tsunami of ‘scuttlebutt’, the ‘maelstrom’ of mud, another story emerges, darker and more complex, as a sex scandal morphs into a political scandal. For an American reference, things have moved from Lewinsky to Watergate. The NZ Herald, the NZ Listener and Metro Magazine are now reporting on an attempted coup by character assassination in the last local body election.

According to the NZ Herald, “if events had gone to plan, the mayor would have resigned citing health problems, [John] Palino would have had the highest vote of surviving candidates when the result was declared, Chuang, Brown and his family would have been saved public embarrassment and the public would have been none the wiser. If this sounds like an American political intrigue, it is. It is not the way things are done here. Our elections are decided by voters, not by underhand threats and warnings.”

It’s much the same in the NZ Listener: “Kiwi public figures have been caught out in affairs and hypocrisy, but never in circumstances that pointed so strongly to intimate details of a politician’s private life being used by rivals to nobble him. There is no doubt that despite denials about who knew what when, Brown’s profoundly ill-advised affair with a much younger political aspirant was covertly used against him. Pressure was applied to his lover, Bevan Chuang, to spill the beans before the local body election, in such a way as to prompt him to withdraw his candidacy.”

Metro Magazine asks the question “who stands to gain from the whole sordid mess?”, naming Auckland City Councillor and Brown opponent Cameron Brewer, Maurice Williamson and Judith Collins. “If any of them knew anything at all, they will have done their best to ensure that events played out, not just to the advantage of their party, but to their own political careers. Not surprisingly, as we went to press, accusations were flying about who orchestrated what. Brown got caught with his pants down. What’s also at stake, now, is control of the National Party in Auckland. Reputations are being made and broken.”

As with most things (if not everything), the PM denies involvement: “I don’t have any advice and I don’t believe the National Party has been involved at all. There may be people who knew about it who are members of the National Party, or at least vague sort of details, but there are also many people who knew about it that weren’t members of the National Party.”

He did however admit to receiving a lot of OTHER scandalous information. “I’ve had plenty of people who’ve rung me up with information about Labour MPs,” he said. “And I’ve done the same thing to every person that’s rung me. I’ve written it down, put it in my top drawer and kept it to myself. I’m just not interested in engaging in it.”

Well, someone was very interested in engaging in it. Was it John Palino? Previously best known as the American front-person for a Japanese sushi chain named after a French saint, the former mayoral candidate denies all knowledge. To date, he remains on holiday in Australia. Palino campaigner worker, former young Nat and inveterate photo-bomber Luigi Wewege has also left the country. “I was politically naïve” are amongst his last words on New Zealand soil. All he did was “just get information and pass it on.”

Sensing the danger, Brown’s former mistress has “a legal opinion clearing her of criminal liability”. According to the Herald on Sunday, “barrister Simon Buckingham has provided a legal opinion to Bevan Chuang’s supporters” and “there appeared to be no evidence to implicate Chuang for any potential blackmail under the Crimes Act. Buckingham did not think Chuang had committed any criminality due to clear evidence she had been pressured into making statements that made the affair public. Blackmail is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.”

And there’s the rub: politics may be “a dirty, disgusting, despicable game ” but unlike adultery, blackmail is a crime, a serious crime, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. If there was a covert plot, a conspiracy to subvert and undermine the intention of the electorate, as is being widely reported in our leading print media, then those responsible must be brought to account.

Speaking of brought to account, former accountant Graham McCready should get a knighthood for his services to democracy. His solo-pursuit of John Banks will climax in a criminal trial, with the Crown Law office now heading the case. So much for cabbage boats! After all this time, it’s hard to disagree with Fran O’Sullivan: “John Banks is a political cot case. His credibility has been toast since Kim Dotcom’s all-too-plausible claim that Banks knew he had tossed a couple of big cheques his way at the 2010 mayoral election but failed to declare them.” Unlike adultery, election fraud is a crime, punishable by up to two years imprisonment. That Banks should maintain a vote in Parliament on any legislation, let alone legislation involving Sky City, a material witness at his criminal trial, remains a scandal in and of itself.

As Banks’ star sets (finally one hopes) on the distant horizon, the sun also rises for at least two men with power on their mind. On Campbell Live, Simon Bridges shouted his way into television history. That deep sea oil explorers will soon move in alongside the whale watchers of Kaikoura seemed less important to him than making his mark and staking his claim. Oozing an almost fanatical self-confidence, Bridges fancies himself as a future PM. Over whose dead body, we shall see. And then there’s Colin Craig. Is he the answer to John Key’s coalition prayers? Conservative Christian Colin Craig? Colin ‘John Key-is-too-gay-for-Helensville’ Craig? As we have endured over the last three years, indeed over the last three weeks, stranger things have happened.

In other news, Meridian Energy sold to just 62 000 investors for a loss of over a billion dollars on a 2011 Treasury valuation. Selling any real estate in New Zealand for a billion dollars less than its 2011 valuation seems a singular achievement to be sure. One could ask (with good reason) ‘Who is managing the country’s portfolio and does he know what he’s doing?”

Perhaps in response to falling poll numbers or Labour’s recent media domination, National has once more seized the initiative and hit the headlines.

The PM has lead the charge, with photo-ops galore at various VIP, globe-trotting, jet-setting, high-level, top secret, international, multibilateral talk-fests. But his loyal Cabinet Ministers have also been doing their bit and have made the news.

Speaking of jet-setting, special mention must be made of Foreign Minister Murray McCully. He was on board an RNZAF Boeing 757 flight to Antarctica carrying 117 passengers which had to circle Scott Base for 2 hours and then make two aborted approaches before making an emergency landing in reduced visibility and freezing fog. “We clearly knew that there was a capacity for this to have an untidy end, and we were enormously relieved that it didn’t.” an ‘enormously-relieved’ McCully later reflected. “We did not have enough fuel to come home, and we had no means of making an unorthodox landing down there. It culminated in what they call a white-out landing. After burning out most of the fuel you get in as close as you can with the instruments and for the last 100ft or so try and find a way down with the pilot using his wits, basically.” White-knuckle stuff to be sure. I praise the pilots. A major disaster was narrowly averted by their skill and courage. Apparently, it was the first time that the air force 757 had landed on the ice in this way. McCully expects the air force to review the landing. “There will be some sort of internal inquiry I’m sure about how one of its planes, with quite a lot of people on board, was able to get into Antarctica without the ability to get back or to land.” I’m sure the RNZAF would like to know how one of its planes, a Boeing 757, “with quite a lot of people on board, was able to get into Antarctica without the ability to get back or to land.”

Though none could match the close-call airborne drama of McCully’s near-death experience, other Cabinet Ministers did find themselves on more metaphoric flights to Antartica without the ability to get back or to land.

Take Education Minister Hekia Parata. For a second time, a second time, her decision to close a school has been deemed unlawful by a High Court judge. Phillipstown School in Christchurch employed counsel Mai Chen, “who last year successfully argued for a High Court judge to overturn the Government’s decision to close Salisbury School, which was deemed unlawful”. They took their to case to Court and, though only a first battle, they won. Good on them and good on Mai Chen. Hekia’s decision to close the school “had caused mass upset with the decile 1 school’s pupils, teachers, and the community.” Phillipstown was particularly angry at a perceived lack of consultation, and Justice Fogarty agreed. “While the judge was certain the Education Ministry conducted consultation “in good faith”, it had failed to meet the requirements of the Education Act.” Like the RNZAF, I’m sure the Education Ministry would like to know how it failed to meet the requirements of the Education Act.

Not to be outdone, Steven Joyce was working through his bucket list of reforms, this time in the tertiary sector, which apparently need to be ‘more effective and efficient. Associate Professor Alan Crocker, head of the school of communications at AUT University, communicated a few of his thoughts about Steven’s thoughts in the NZ Herald: “The core of the paper, which you entitle: “Why the Government is reviewing legislative settings for university governance”, only amounts to one and a half pages. The arguments are slight with an almost complete absence of evidence for the claims made”. A one and a half page report? Better than the two paragraphs recently mustered by the Department of Conservation I guess.

Crocker continued: “You argue that the current governance settings for universities are based on a representative model which you see as a negative as it “prioritises stakeholder representation over the governance skills and abilities of council members. However, you neglect to mention that this is a common and important feature in the governance of public institutions and bodies and is, of course, a cornerstone of a democratic state.” Poor Steven. All he wants is a bigger bang for his buck or some such phrase of effective efficiency and what does he get? A lecture from an Associate Professor on how stakeholder representation is the cornerstone of a democratic state. The Associate Professor concluded his remarks and graded Steven’s work: “The education sector in New Zealand has recently suffered from initiatives such as the amalgamation or closure of schools in Christchurch or the implementation of payroll software where insufficient research and consultation has resulted in poor outcomes. This is an inadequate piece of work which requires a great deal more research and thought. D-.”

National’s flagship economic platform, asset sales, also made the news, the world news in fact. According to The Japan Times headline: “State asset sales raise doubts after Mighty River reveals buyback plan” Five months to the day after the government started “a new round of contentious asset sales” with the IPO of Mighty River Power, the company announced plans to buy back $50m of its shares. The Wall Street Journal noted that the “shares have been under significant pressure since the company was listed in May.”

Unsurprisingly, the Opposition had some thoughts. “The entire float was a shambles and the Government got it wrong from the beginning.“ claimed Labour’s SOE spokesperson Clayton Cosgrove. Winston Peters called it “financial roulette”. On 3 News, Greens co-leader Metiria Turei said “John Key’s asset sales have descended from failure to farce today. Just five months after National sold these shares, promising a golden opportunity for so-called ‘mum and dad’ investors, Mighty River is buying them back at a loss for investors.” Even business journalist Rod Oram weighed in, saying “this is a classic desperate strategy of companies with excess profits, low growth opportunities and an ailing share price”

Mighty River’s chairwoman Joan Withers was unmoved. “The board’s view is that a purchase of our shares, at this time and at current market prices, provides a return above the company’s cost of capital and will be value-enhancing for our shareholders.” And goodness knows, those shares did need some value-enhancing. She also pointedly noted the buyback decision was made by the Board without political interference. Nope. Nothing political about upping the MRP share price just as Meridian goes on the block. According to Joan, it’s just business. But as Paddy Gower observed “Buy-backs like this are not unusual in the commercial world but in the political world it’s all about symbolism – and Mighty River buying back shares at a bargain basement price looks like a political failure.”

So in summary: a near-miss for Murray McCully, two strikes for Hekia Parata, a D- for Steven Joyce and symbolic failure for the Mighty River shares buy-back.

As ever, the PM was unphased. “It’s highly normal” he beamed from Brunei. It’s all highly normal.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/10/14/highly-normal/feed/5Berm Baby, Berm!https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/10/07/berm-baby-berm/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/10/07/berm-baby-berm/#commentsSun, 06 Oct 2013 17:21:56 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=33840
We live in a small world where everything is interconnected.

In the US, the rabid right-wing of the Republican Party has brought about the shutdown of the government of the world’s largest economy. Lead by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose presidential aspirations are as blatant as they are deluded, the Tea Party is holding the country to ransom in an attempt to re-litigate a law that has been ratified by the Supreme Court, if not the US electorate itself in the 2012 election. Obamacare, as they call it, is a done deal. Not so, say Kruz and Co. And so…gridlock. It’s not the first time the US Government has shut down – things ground to a halt twice under Bill Clinton. But the American economy was in great shape back then. And current US lawmakers also face a fast-looming crisis issue of lifting the country’s debt ceiling.

The implications of the US defaulting on its (astronomical) debt obligations are too mind-boggling to conjure with. So mind-boggling are they in fact that the Prez decided to cancel his appearance at this year’s APEC meeting in Bali. He also had to delegate his position as Chair of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks to….guess who?….that’s right: our own PM, John Key, honest broker that he is. Obama’s domestic predicament has opened the door for the PM to use those formidable skills refined over many, many years spent not I suspect as New Zealand’s Prime Minister but rather, as a senior executive of Merrill Lynch. It seems fitting in a way. Its detail still secret, the ‘partnership’ is being sold as once-in-a-life-time trade opportunity for New Zealand. Bali will all about wheeling and dealing and as we have come to witness, no one wheels and deals like the PM. According to TVNZ, “Obama had intended to thrash out issues with leaders of the 11 other TPP member countries” Now, by some freak of US domestic political circumstance, it will be up to John Key to do the thrashing on his behalf.

The TPPA has far-reaching, irrevocable implications for New Zealand. From what I’ve read, it’s hard not to see it as a mechanism for expanding and perpetually securing the power, markets and money of Corporate America, fuelled in no small measure in response to China’s growing regional influence. High stakes indeed. Opponent, Law School Professor Jane Kelsy urges us “to think about whether this agreement really is in New Zealand’s national interest or of the other countries and look at how we have a democratic debate about a different way of addressing our needs for the 21st century.” ‘Bah Humbug’ says Trade Minister Tim Groser. “New Zealand has been starved of trading opportunities.” he says, forgetting for a moment those many burgeoning trade opportunities we had before Fonterra had that botulism misdiagnosis and we sent all that mistakenly-labeled meat to China. “I just recommend to New Zealanders pay no attention whatsoever to this nonsense”. As ever with this Government, expert, considered, reasoned, democratically-driven opposition to its agenda is dismissed: misinformed, misguided, politically-aligned, wrong, or in this instance, nonsense. Hmmm. I wonder

The reality is (as Steven Joyce likes to say) that more and more of us misinformed, misguided, politically-aligned, wrong, nonsensical people are having second thoughts about National. All the wheels and deals aren’t delivering such a bright future after all and if an election was held today, the three latest polls suggest New Zealanders, more concerned with their ability to pay the power bill than buy the power company would vote for a Labour / Green Government. Bugger.

But if you only and always go in to bat for the big guy, what can you expect? A country is not a company. As a society, prosperity is our goal, not profit. The flaw in neoliberalism’s logic is that it costs everything, values nothing and doesn’t share the joy. It’s hard for ordinary Kiwi mums and dads to dance in the streets at the news of ACC’s huge surplus. As the Auckland housing bubble further inflates, it’s hard to break out the champagne at the news of subsidized deposits on a hundred or state houses in the provinces. When you hear that “Basically if the Commerce Commission ruling stands there’s a chance Chorus will go broke, in which case the Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) won’t be rolled out”, as the PM recently told TVNZ, it’s hard to get enthused. The Solid Energy bail-out saves some jobs, which is not to be sniffed at, but the significant tax-payer contribution is again intertwined with more wheels and banking deals and again, like Tiwai Point, is somewhat mitigated by the stale, pale odour of staving off inevitability. Even the PM’s recent world tour didn’t yield much, if anything, to write home about (our new High Commission in Barbados notwithstanding). In short, National’s best-case scenarios fail to offer much to the majority and every day in every way, the Opposition is getting its act together. Bugger indeed.

Speaking of bugger, until George W stole the 2000 US election by (mis)(dis)counting Florida votes, I’d never heard of the word ‘chad’. And until the 2013 Local Body Elections, I was a ‘berm’ virgin. ‘Berm’? What is this thing called ‘Berm’? Whatever it was, it apparently required frequent mowing. I had to look it up.

According to Wikipedia (do you remember a world before Wikipedia?), “a berm is a level space, shelf, or raised barrier separating two areas. It can serve as a border barrier. The word berm originates in the Middle Dutch and German berme and came into usage in English via French.” Interesting. But, ever-helpful, Google had more to offer on Berms. According to the Urban Dictionary, it’s a smell: “a combination of beer and sperm” Ahem! It’s also “the sound a Turtle makes.” as in “Berm.Berrrrrrrrrmmm”. Good grief!Now, thanks to local body politics, whenever I hear that stupid word on the news, which is often, all sorts of things pop into my mind. Berm baby, berm!

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/10/07/berm-baby-berm/feed/1A Desperate Sensation to Throw Uphttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/09/29/a-desperate-sensation-to-throw-up/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/09/29/a-desperate-sensation-to-throw-up/#commentsSat, 28 Sep 2013 18:49:49 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=32954There he was striding through the streets of Manhattan, entouraged, en route to his first US engagement, when all of a sudden the PM turned white as a ghost and had to run into a nearby pub. After a brief ‘pitstop’, normal transmission was resumed : “I don’t know whether I ate something or whatever, but it was short and sharp.” The PM has had a bit of rich food of late. Paris is famous for its cuisine and I’m sure Queenie is no slouch when it comes to serving her house-guests at Balmoral. All this plus the air travel could well explain his ‘ “desperate sensation to throw up” when he was talking to the media about 10 minutes before he ran into trouble on the footpath.’

Or perhaps he had just caught an early whiff of the latest Herald- DigiPoll result. The headline was stomach-churning enough: ‘Labour Rockets in Poll’. For the PM, honest broker that he is, in NYC to win friends and influence people’s vote on our Security Council bid, the news was bad: “Labour’s support has jumped under new leader David Cunliffe to the extent that he could form a coalition government and become Prime Minister, if today’s Herald-DigiPoll survey figures were translated to an election result.” But wait, there was worse to come: “The poll also shows a marked dive in the popularity of John Key, to the lowest level since he became Prime Minister.”

The PM will be hoping this, like his tummy attack, is something short and sharp: an anomaly fuelled by the public’s passing fancy with Labour’s new man at the top and new line up. But there is always that queasy possibility that a trend is emerging. Doug Armstrong wrestled gingerly with the delicate subject : “What might be happening is that the wear and tear on National’s reputation from various earlier debilitating sideshows and botch-ups is finally showing in the polls. Voters’ attitudes as to how they will cast their vote are slow to change – more so with a Government as pragmatic and unwilling to risk frightening the punters as the current one.” Ahem. Wear and tear? Various earlier debilitating sideshows and botch-ups? Unwilling to risk frightening the punters?! It doesn’t seem that long ago that the PM was alerting us all (via the More FM Breakfast Show) that al-Qaeda was amongst us.

Aside from the debilitating sideshows and botch-ups, it’s National’s main bill, that poses the real problem. Its central economic platforms (asset sales, mineral exportation / exploitation and a Casino Convention Centre) have all passed with a negligible mandate. National fails to grasp how many households struggle to pay the power bill. In spite of strong opposition and a citizen’s initiated referendum, it presses on with the sale of Meridian Energy. To make it happen, it has to write out a $30m cheque to Rio Tinto and sweeten the deal with a share installment offer. And if the Mighty River sale is anything to go by, only a tiny percentage of the population will have the readies to participate.

In the House, Russel Norman questioned the fairness of it all, interrogating SOE Minister Tony Ryall: “Can he think of a more extreme case of a Government that favours the rich and the powerful over everybody else than the example of giving interest-free loans to offshore investment banks so that they can purchase shares in what is currently a company owned by the people of New Zealand?” Winston paraphrased Sir Winston: “Never has so much been stolen from so many for the benefit of so few sleazy crony mates.”

Has the current Government reached a “tipping-point”? David Cunnliffe thinks so and with good reason. After a while, the chorus cries of corruption, cronyism and corporate welfare begin to stick, a narrative not helped by allegations of more skullduggery by that stale, pale, male Nick Smith muscling over the Ministry of Conservation. Every day, the country gets closer to an election and National is in dire need of viable coalition partners and vote-winning policies. For the first time, it faces an articulate Opposition, a credible Government-in-Waiting and the numbers are beginning to show it.

There was no solace to be had on the international stage beyond a series of Woman’s Weekly photo-ops with Her Majesty. In slow motion, the country watched the America’s Cup slip from its grasp. No feel-good photo-ops to be had there . To rub salt into the wound, Kim Dotcom offered to help out with another challenge. Even in his self-admittedly ‘shoe-string’ efforts to promote New Zealand’s Security Council bid, the PM was sabotaged. One could argue whether a stinging attack was the best tactic to secure a seat in the first place. To deliver such an attack “minutes before news came that the United States and Russia had agreed on a resolution to require Syria to hand over its chemical weapons” was indeed ” rather bad timing for Mr Key, who used very strong language to castigate the five permanent members of the Security Council for failing to achieve exactly that”. Dubbing him the antipodean mouse that roared, the Herald drily noted that “the closest John Key could get to being seen as anywhere near as important was if somebody confused his name with that of John Kerry.”

I’d hazard a guess the PM might be getting that desperate sensation again.

Across the ditch, Oz had a bit of (compulsory) democracy and elected in a new government. Unsurprisingly, Labor (there’s no ‘u’!) lost. A Ruddbath some wag called it. I was never convinced a late leader-change was going to help matters and I must say Mr Rudd’s charms have always eluded me. No matter. It’s Tony’s way from now on: ‘Australia’s Under New Management’ declared its new leader. Or manager. The OZ PM-elect was first sighted the next morning, lycra-clad, for his regular routine Sunday bike ride. We must be thankful an early-morning swim was not Abbott’s habit is all I can say. On the night of the election, former PM Bob Hawke guest-spotted on some TV show. Tanned and ancient but still proudly-coiffed, he reflected on his party’s disunity as the obvious source of voter discontent.. The message could not be louder or clearer for other interested parties of the Left anywhere: united we stand, divided we lose.

Back home, we are getting some democracy as well, this time in the form selecting a new Labour (we do have a ‘u’) leader. The three have performed with idiosyncratic distinction, avoiding acrimony and encouraging debate. I don’t think I’ve heard the term ‘neo-liberalism’ discussed so often. Over a year out from going to the polls, the Government’s agenda is getting the once-over from the three candidates: articulate, considered, fluent criticism of the direction the country is travelling: a discussion on human costs. This is Labour’s brand and its point of distinction: human costs. David Cunliffe leads most public polls and Shane Jones ‘forthrighteousness’ is winning friends if not influencing people. Whoever wins, I hope they were listening to Bob Hawke.

We’re getting some more democracy in the form of a citizen’s-initiated referendum on asset sales. Hundreds of thousands of kiwi Mums and Dads and others signed, recording their strong opposition to National’s major economic platform . Our PM called this expression of democracy an utter waste of money. Like the $30m to Rio Tinto. Like the estimated $100m broker / banker / consultant fees. Like the estimated $100m annual lost income to the tax-payer from the sale of profit-generating assets. Indeed, when it comes to statements on utter wastes of money, the PM’s utterances were a bit rich.

In the Middle East, it seems inevitable Syria is going to get a short, sharp dose of democracy as well, in the form of a ‘limited’ US aerial strike. Ten years after Iraq, Obama, visibly-aged, a long way now from Hope and Change and Nobel Peace Prizes, finds himself addressing the nation, advocating for an attack in the Middle East. Suddenly, the credibility of the world’s last super-power, paragon of democracy, is at stake. A red line has been crossed. History teaches that happy endings usually do not follow such things.

On other fronts, it’s been a colourful week in politics. Kim Dotcom may establish his own party. Simon Bridges called Sam Neill a hypocrite for flying in planes but opposing oil exploration. Amy Adams gave assurances that accidents never (well, hardly ever) happen in the oil industry. Clayton Cosgrove demanded some accountability from the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises, “Liberace!” Judith Collins gave an impassioned speech about the immorality of children having their own legal counsel in the Family Court. But most pleasingly, Asenati Lole-Taylor asked Anne Tolley how she would feel if someone came up to her in the street and asked “How much for a blowjob?”. The Minister blushed, claiming no ministerial responsibility. Perhaps it’s a question we should ask of the entire cabinet. Just to be democratic.

“This is essential legislation that has attracted a lot of debate, much of it alarmist.”. So said the PM as he opened the third and final reading of the GCSB Bill. This from a man who alarmingly dropped the al-Qaeda word into the debate on More FM’s Breakfast Show. This from a man who disarmingly said on Campbell Live that emails can’t be accessed and then alarmingly modified his patent falsehood in a media statement next day to the New Zealand Herald. In the same debate, Bill English made short work of the critics. “The Human Rights Commission did not read the legislation” said Bill with a straight face. Chris Finlayson made an even shorter, shriller shrift on it, accusing Dame Anne Salmond of being “shrill and unprofessional”. So much for any and all opposition: alarmist, shrill and unprofessional to the extent of not even reading the legislation. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that those unalarmist bastions of professionalism and unshrillness, Peter Dunne and John Banks saved us from ourselves, ignoramuses all, and voted with the Government to enact the new laws. Next time, those slouches in the Law Society, the Privacy Commissioner and the Human Rights Commission will know better than to cross swords with these political paragons, these virtuosos of virtuosity, these gate-keepers of democracy. Only their self-interest outshines their national interest. Or should I say National interest. Last I heard, Banks has yet to face his day in court on those alarming election fraud charges. Alarmingly, we haven’t heard the last yet of Peter Dunne though.

The Privileges Committee met this week to hold an investigation into the inquiry of the leaking of a report into a report. Unsurprisingly, no one was any the wiser at the end of it. As Winston Peters noted, with some alarm, it was a farce. After $42 000 worth of investigation, the leaker remained, dare I say it in these much-surveilled times, Anonymous. All fingers point to Dunne. Did Dunne do it? Does it matter anymore? He stood up when it counted, for himself, and has even reconstituted himself into a proper Party again. There is a word on the street for willing sellers. It rhymes with ‘bores’.

Speaking of bores, David Shearer’s sudden departure from the Labour leadership was anything but boring. Perhaps it was a long time coming. Nice guys don’t even finish in politics, let alone finish last . The inexplicable durability of Banks and Dunne proves this. On Citizen A, I once referred to Mr Shearer as Dr Stumblebum. You have to be able to string words together in this business. As Key proved on Campbell Live, the veracity of these words is less important than the jet-stream at which they must be able to flow from a politician’s mouth. Poor David. Even his farewell speech contained a few stumbles. Nice man. Wrong job. Ruthless snake-oil salesmen (like our own PM) make for better casting. David was too ruth, if there is a word meaning the opposite of ruthless. Key may be a lot of things but ruth is not one of them.

Labour is now seeking a replacement: a new leader. Leading the pack are David Cunnliffe and Grant Robertson. Both are fluent speakers with political experience who can think on their feet and take the fight to National. Is David too polarizing and un-telegenic? Is Grant too beltway and….well….gay? Who cares! Both are better placed to focus and communicate the Left’s message than Shearer and therefore both pose a greater threat to the Government. One can only hope the selection process doesn’t devolve into an act of political self-immolation. Russel Norman for the Greens, Winston Peters for New Zealand First and Hone Harawira for Mana have walked the talk (and talked the walk) in Opposition. Love or loathe them, they have a clarity of purpose and expression that Labour has yet to find. When they speak, their ideas, like them or loathe them, cut through. You know what you’re dealing with. They have, shall we say, political eloquence. This is what Labour’s next leader must have if he is to unite the Party and the people and become our next Prime Minister.

At the moment, we endure political arrogance . In their own words: alarmist, shrill and unprofessional. Key’s political mismanagement so irked Judith Collins and Anne Tolley that they let their true colours show, criticizing the PM’s accessing of their private communications without their consent. Aside from the preposterousness of their claim, made on the very morning they voted to support the GCSB Bill into law, the fact of their criticism, contempt even, is a measure of the arrogance we currently endure. Its antidote is, as I say, political eloquence. Will we hear it over the next few weeks as Labour makes its choice? I hope so. With all my heart, I hope so.

“In the course of the interview he said incorrectly that under the bill, the GCSB would not be allowed to look at the content of communications when conducting their cyber-security functions. In fact, there is nothing that prevents it from doing so.” So reported the NZ Herald on the actual content of the Key/ Campbell showdown on the GCSB Bill. Not the form, not a review of the PM’s silver-tongued, masterful debating skills, not John Campbell’s ass-whipped trouncing but rather, the content of what the Prime Minister said and its resemblance (or not) to the actual, factual truth of the matter.

There is a word for such ‘misstatements’. It’s a word politicians are not allowed to use in the House. It’s the opposite of the truth, aka a lie. On primetime TV, the PM lays before the country the reassuring case for amendments to legislation that has met with opposition from the New Zealander of the Year to Microsoft. It’s a waterproof-case, compelling even. Just not based in fact. Just untrue. Just a lie. Aside from this minor detail of untruthiness (as Stephen Colbert might say), all is well and good. Or as a Duchess says in Alice in Wonderland : …”put more simply — “Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”‘ Could anything be more straight-forward? The PM, except for being wrong, is right. Except when it does allow the GCSB to look at the content of communications when conducting their cyber-security functions, the proposed legislation does not allow such a thing. And so it was that in New Zealand, by Prime Ministerial decree, night became day, black became white (sounds like a nice idea for a flag!) and 2 + 2 equaled 5. The PM’s pledges (to the NZ Herald) that all will be well. That the legislation does not actually say this means we have to take Key at his word. But as discussed, from the PM’s mouth, words, silver or otherwise have an increasing tendency to mean whatever he says they mean.

Key’s performance, like that of his Government, would put the Mock Turtle to shame such has been the “Reeling and Writhing and then the different branches of Arithmetic- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision.”. Just as National clings to claims of 100% Purity like a dog with a proverbial bone, it proposes amendments to the RMA under which, according to Rod Oram, ” the environment will take its chances alongside economic development, landowner’s rights and other considerations.”Amy Adams judges water cleanliness not by actual water cleanliness but rather by the amount of money her Government spends on water cleanliness. As I write, central New Zealand is still rocking from a very unsettling swarm of significant earthquakes. Will oil drilling proceed on this very fault line? What could be (un)safer? The asset sale programme has proved such a winner that we are now minus a strategic asset as a nation and those fortunate few who had the readies to invest have yet to see the share price return to the IPO of $2.50. Luckily, the Meridian sale can now proceed because that corporate pauper Rio Tinto has just been bribed $30m of tax-payers’ money to stay on for another 18 months. There’s nothing National can touch without it turning into a ‘saga’, ‘scandal’, ‘fiasco’, ‘imbroglio’ ‘debacle’ or ‘cock-up’. I’m reminded of Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed. Rod Oram’s piece in the Sunday Star-Times was entitled ‘Full Speed Backwards’ so we are in an even more dire predicament.

Heads have started to roll at Fonterra and four enquiries have been announced to probe what went wrong and how baby formula and botulism became intermingled. It’s an excellent question but with the vested interests and reputations of various highly paid executives, Government officials, Cabinet Ministers and the country’s economy at stake, one wonders what level of probity will be plumbed or tolerated. We have the PM’s word on this as well that we’ll get to the bottom of things. Ahem. All I can say is it’s lucky no botulism has yet been discovered in snapper, which has become the fish of the day in more ways than one thanks to Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy’s primary school efforts at portfolio management. With the dairy industry on notice, the meat industry still recovering from the embarrassment of an inability to do proper paperwork, Guy courts more controversy now with fish quota. In a wonderful act of protest cross-fertilization, a group of protesters picketed and pelted the PM’s Parnell mansion with dead fish (not snapper one presumes) to prove we did in fact care about the GCSB Bill. Perhaps we have discovered New Zealand’s very own version of shoe-throwing to express disgust: a wallop in the kisser with a dead fish! We could do worse (although it must be said many people are going without quality protein at the moment. Yesterday, the PM wasn’t one of them!). More bottoms will be got to as well with the Privileges Committee’s investigation this week into who leaked a report into an inquiry of an inquiry. In the end, one hopes all will be revealed and we will we be able to tell our Kibblewhites from our Kitteridges.

Tonight, an impressive line-up of speakers will address a gathering in the Town Hall about the GCSB Bill. Some are politicians, some German internet pirate squillionares. Perhaps they have an axe to grind. But what of the others? What vested interest could they have other than the preservation of democracy and the rule of law? Do such things matter anymore in a country where the more the lights go out, the more brightly the Government’s poll numbers shine? Even that left-wing rag the National Business Review has been consistent in its criticism. Up is down. Black is white. Except when it’s not, the PM’s word is gospel.

On a brighter note, gay marriage also comes into effect today. I’d wager future generations will look back on this as National’s greatest (only) achievement as a Government, the result of a conscience vote where National actually voted with a conscience. This momentary lapse of reason, inspiring and historic, only brings all its other bogus programmes and marginal mandates into a sharper, disquieting focus, as through the looking glass darkly.

In November 1979, as many New Zealander’s will never forget, an Air New Zealand DC10 was tragically lost on the slopes of Mt Erebus.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry, led by Justice Peter Mahon absolved the pilots of responsibility, attributing the cause to the airline changing the flight’s co-ordinates without telling the crew, combined with a malevolent trick of the polar light. During the Commission, he noted that from the airline, he had been forced to listen to ‘an orchestrated litany of lies’. Political response to the verdict was swift and brutal. The Prime Minister of the time, Robert Muldoon took the case to the Privy Council, which found that Mahon had acted beyond his brief when coming to his conclusion. (It didn’t absolve Air New Zealand). Mahon was destroyed by the process and died soon after.

Three decades later, another major New Zealand company, the ‘national carrier ‘ of Brand NZ if you like, has met with disaster. Mercifully, no lives have been lost. But as with Erebus, some system failed with catastrophic consequence and, if we are to re-establish our reputation for food safety in markets throughout the world, indeed, restore the country’s image, a full, independent inquiry must be held. Perhaps Fonterra’s much-lauded scientists should turn their microscopes on the dairy giant’s corporate culture, for therein lies the toxin. One hopes an independent inquiry will not encounter the same political interference meted out to Mahon’s investigation and conclusions.

It should also be remembered that prior to the accident, Air New Zealand had mounted a publicity campaign trumpeting “Nobody Does It Better.” It was immediately withdrawn after that tragic day. Today, the 100% Pure campaign has that hubristic echo. As newspapers around the world point out with a breath-taking frankness, New Zealand is not 100% pure. If we don’t confront head-on and fearlessly the truth and take appropriate steps to fix what is so clearly broken, we step into the future as a nation deluded, fooling no one but ourselves. In that circumstance, we would get what we deserve. Nevertheless, John Key defended our 100% purity: “it’s a marketing slogan, not meant to be taken literally.” he said. Like National’s ‘Building a brighter future” one presumes.

This week, it could be argued, we did not get what we deserved: Fonterra CEO Theo Spieling’s salary was revealed: $5 200 000 PER YEAR; $100 000 PER WEEK; $14 285 PER DAY; $595 PER HOUR; 0r $9.90 PER MINUTE. For his handling of the first week of the crisis, Mr Spieling pocketed a cool $100 000. Nice work if you can get it! It was also revealed Rio Tinto received a taxpayer windfall of $30m to keep to on smelting (for a few more years at most). Social welfare may be taboo in New Zealand but corporate welfare is alive and well, well, well.

The National Party faithful met in Nelson. With polls numbers still high, it was a back-slapping affair. Judith Collins’ bare-face denial’s of prime minisetrial ambition were even a thigh-slapping affair, so transparently false were they. And discussions of a new flag, surely the most pressing issue facing us all, met with no little support.

The PM’s keynote address was worthy of Cirque-de Soliel, so many plates were spinning in the air. Here’s a section for your entertainment:”

“Under MMP, all elections are close elections. And they are not just about National versus Labour, but about the centre-right versus the left. And it’s clear for everyone to see that Labour has hitched their wagon to the Greens, lurching the opposition to the far left. Make no mistake, our opposition comes from the far left of politics. The Greens are leading Labour by the nose. It’s important that New Zealanders understand what a Green-dominated government would look like. They want to tax you more, rack up more debt and make you work two more years before you can retire. They want a government department to run the entire electricity system, just like it did in the old days when we had blackouts. They want to stop oil, gas and mineral exploration that would create jobs and growth. They blame foreigners for all the ills of the country when our future prosperity lies in being open and connected to the rest of the world. They even characterize businesses relocating jobs from Australia to New Zealand as ‘deeply worrying’. And they take petty, opportunistic political positions on national security in the face of the obvious need to clarify the GCSB law – a law they passed in the first place!” My head is still spinning!

Petty, opportunistic political positions on national security in the face of no obvious need to clarify the GCSB law is National’s stance on the matter more like it. The Human Rights Commission, the Privacy Commissioner, The Law Society and the New Zealander of the Year, hardly petty, opportunistic and political, have lined up in opposition along with more experts than you can shake a stick at. But, according to National, they are all wrong. According to Chris Finlayson, they are all wrong. But he is right. I wonder? This Government is clearly ‘unsinkable’, for they tell us so themselves!

And as for “our future prosperity lies in being open and connected to the rest of the world”, National needs to read every single paper in the world, for according to them, we have not been open to the rest of the world and to say we are in fact disconnected would be the understatement of the universe. But we must not let facts get in the way. Those at the conference could be treated by a glass of “PM’s Pinot Noir’, grown on an Otago vineyard of which the PM has no knowledge. He knows only of a vineyard in Otago. People were pulling split hairs from their vino all night!

So extraordinary has this week been, I’ve taken to writing a little satire at the expense of our beloved leaders, for a little therapy. I do it to save my television, for this week, I’ve thrown so many things at the box, I fear it’s going to be smashed to (Nick) Smithereens! Speaking for a us all, a hapless waiter at Bellamy’s served several Ministers of the Crown. Here he is, soldiering on with Judith Collins (who has no prime ministerial ambitions, let it be remembered!).

Waiter: Good evening Minister, can I take your order?
Judith Collins: I’ll be the judge of that!
Waiter: Yes Ma’am of course.
Judith Collins: And stand up straight when you’re addressing me!!
Waiter: Yes Ma’am
Judith Collins: Do you think Baroness Thatcher had to put up with this sort of nonsense?!?
Waiter: No Ma’am.
Judith Collins: I think not. God rest her soul!…
Waiter: Indeed Ma’am. Would you care to…
Judith Collins: How dare you interrupt me when I’m talking?!!!?
Waiter: Please forgive me…
Judith Collins: I’m not Helen Clark you know!!!
Waiter: No Ma’am
Judith Collins: I mean really!!! You think you can just walk up to me and start talking?!!!!?
Waiter: I am a waiter, Ma’am.
Judith Collins: Don’t answer back!!!! I’ll have you in court before you can say David Bain is innocent and deserves compensation!!!!!
Waiter: Yes Ma’am
Judith Collins: Now look here, whatever your name is: I’ve just about had enough of your lip!!!! Really!!!! You give people the vote and suddenly everyone’s got an opinion!!! You think this place is a democracy or something?!!?
Waiter: No Ma’am
Judith Collins: I think not!! Now give me that menu!!! Right!!! I’ll have the wings!! Right ones only!!! Got that?!!? Don’t answer!! Just write!!! Then I’ll have the roast Mallard with crushed balls on the side!!!
Waiter: Yes Ma’am
Judith Collins: And I’ll have a Bloody Mary!!!!
Waiter: Yes Ma’am
Judith Collins: Hold the Mary!!!!
Waiter: Yes Ma’am.
Judith Collins: Now get out of my sight!!!!
Waiter: Yes Minister

Well, it made me laugh. And when it comes to political parties that make you laugh, you’ve got to hand it to National: Nobody Does it Better!

Waiter: Good afternoon Prime Minister, can I take your order now?
PM: Let me ssssee. For sstarterss I’ll try that Chinese imbroglio
Waiter: Hot or cold, Sir?
PM: Red hot if you’ve got it.
Waiter: No problem Sir. And for the main?
PM: Yesssssssssss. I’d like a fresh sscandal please.
Waiter: Excellent choice, Sir. Would you like some saga on the side?
PM: O yessssssssssssss, that would be lovely.
Waiter: And anything for dessert?
PM: Hmmmmm. Just dessertssss…..let me ssee….that fiasco soundss good.
Waiter: It does look very nice Sir.
PM: I’m torn between that or the debacle. What would you recommend?
Waiter: Why not both, Sir?
PM: Why not? I’ve been a good boy.
Waiter: Right you are Sir. So that’s a red hot Chinese imbroglio, followed by a fresh scandal with a side order of saga followed by a plate of fiasco and debacle.
PM: Now I think of it, can I have little cock-up with that sscandal?
Waiter: Of course, Sir. A great combination if I may say so myself. Will that be all?
PM: Sssssoundsssss like me.
Waiter: And anything to drink today Sir?
PM: A Karicare latte
Waiter: Delicious and nutrious choice Sir. I’ll be right back.
PM: No hurry. I’ve got sssome tapessssss to lisssten to.

So it turns out the threat to New Zealand came from within not without and was small, not great, tiny in fact, invisible to the eye: a bacteria, clostridium botulinum: botulism. For months, New Zealand’s largest company (and the spine of our economy) sat on information that, due to a broken pipe at one of its processing plants in the Waikato, whey used in the manufacture of products including baby formula, had potentially been exposed to a dangerous, sometimes lethal toxin. In publicity you cannot buy, New Zealand made the papers around the world. But not for our 100% Pure or 100% Middle Earth status. Like the ‘Unsinkable’ Titanic, our hubristic claims came back to bite the arse of NZ Inc in the worst possible whey. Baby formula! Tim Groser, left holding the proverbial on Q&A shunned discussion of blame. “We will return there when we’ve sorted out the immediate risk to babies – our own and in other countries.” If ever there was a duty of care to consumers and a guide-line for capitalism, “immediate risk to babies” would be it. And yet there it is. And we are the culprits. Not North Korea or Iran or any of the world’s usual suspects. It is New Zealand, good citizen of the world, who posed an ‘immediate risk to babies’ in several markets, including China, already spooked by a couple of baby-killing scandals in this area. Russia, who didn’t even receive any of the products has banned Fonterra. Russia bans Fonterra. It’s come to this! Unbelievable doesn’t quite capture the scope, scale, genesis and exodus (of overseas customers) of this economic catastrophe. We can be assured that heads will roll. Indeed a guillotine might need to erected in Aotea Square to cope with the demand. Our economy might be destroyed but at least the public will have free entertainment.

The worst economic news ever to hit us, our very own iceberg of contaminated whey, was struck over a very busy weekend. Late on Friday afternoon, just as the USA announced a world-wide (though non-specific) al-Qaeda threat warning, 150 pages of emails were dumped into the public arena. This tried-and-true political convention made for a lot of late-night reading for concerned parties. But read they did and on Q & A, Russel Norman and Grant Robertson convincingly and compellingly joined the dots of doubt over the Government’s actions and political mismanagement with regard to Andrea Vance, Peter Dunne, the freedom of the press, free speech and other issues of considerable constitutional importance. For the Government, Steven Joyce had no such luck. He attacked the question, the questioner, the Opposition and the media for their hypocrisy. Having long called for the Government to get to the bottom of the matter, the Opposition now complains when we have got there he shouted over Rachel Smalley. The truth is, the Government has got to the bottom of the matter. The rock bottom. The barrel scrapings. Complicit or incompetent? To quote Joyce “You can’t have it both ways”.

In any event, it seems that John Key’s long honeymoon with the press is over. It’s been a long one, longer than most, but all too-good-to-be-true things must come to an end and one suspects this divorce is going to get ugly and a lot of dirty laundry is going to be aired. Perhaps the greatest scandal is that this country faced serious issues before Fonterra exponentially (and perhaps irrevocably) made them worse. Child poverty, unemployment, the still-devasted state of our second-largest city have all taken a back seat whilst the PM devotes his time to extricating himself from a series of scandals and crises of his own creation. In the House, the topic of debate is no longer about policy and good governance but rather who did what and when and can they (dis)prove it.

No news is good news. This week, we made world news: the PM made the news, the GCSB Bill made the news, Andrea Vance and Peter Dunne made the news, Wayne Eagleson made the news, a senior public servant quitting made the news, police accessing ‘Teacupgate’ emails made the news, the domestic al-Qaeda threat as announced by the PM to Simon Barnett on More FM’s breakfast show made the news and, most damning for us all, “the immediate risk to babies” posed by New Zealand’s biggest company made the news. The future prosperity of you and your loved ones didn’t get a look in.

First, he dismissed criticism as misinformed or politically aligned. On this issue, none of the people I heard addressing the recent public meeting or the march sounded misinformed. In fact, none of the expert testimony I have heard or read seemed misinformed. Quite the contrary. As for politically aligned, if opinions are to be dissed for their political alignment, presumably the National Government, indeed Key himself, would have to recuse themselves from the debate for their political alignment. Only Peter Dunne could express an opinion via this logic, for as we know, he has no political alignment, let alone a political party.

Then the PM went on to say that if we wanted to host big events like the Rugby World Cup, we need adequate security laws. Fair point. Well, it would have been had the Rugby World Cup not actually gone off without a hitch under the existing legislation. Then he said we needed to get our laws in line with those of our allies. Debatable. Well, it would have been had New Zealand not, all by itself and with the extreme disapproval of its allies, adopted staunch anti-nuclear laws that prevent the visits of US warships. So quite what the man was banging on about on Q & A this morning, beyond fear-mongering propaganda, I’m not sure.

When it comes down to it, I suspect the threat that he’s so concerned about is economic. I doubt he’s even considered your physical well-being. Kim Dotcom’s ‘crime’, whatever it is, is economic. He didn’t kill anyone or rape them or fly anything into anything else. Ostensibly (and deportably: remember I’m talking about FBI-armed-raid-on-you-house-ably), he breached someone’s copywright. This whole issue is about security only to the extent it’s about securing some people’s right to print money. And I far as I’m concerned, my right to privacy, like Dotcom’s, and like yours and your children’s children’s right trumps this anyday, everyday and forevermore. Case closed.

Speaking of Trumps, on a more serious note, RT financial commentator Max Keiser is reporting a worldwide run on physical gold bullion, with demand now exceeding supply. Astoundingly, the bankers of the world seemed to have leased, sold or otherwise absconded with other people’s shiny stuff and now, when they want it back, it’s nowhere to be found. Another commentator just quietly advised his subscribers who had any gold stored with JP Morgan to immediately withdraw it to avoid “another MF Global fiasco” (MF Global being the huge investment bank that recently went belly-up after US$1 billion of customer funds mysteriously disappeared into someone’s ether). Some readers may already be aware that when Germany asked the US for ‘some’ of its gold back from ‘safe storage’ in Manhattan, it was told it could have half back in seven (count them, seven) years! Wars have been fought for less.

This is, of course, a troubling development for the global economy. When everyone catches on that their gold is gone and their money isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, we will all be up the proverbial wishing we too had a cabbage boat. So I suppose it’s no wonder that Key & Co are keen to keep control of the printing presses that have served them so well. Various bubbles are about to burst and it won’t be soap we are covered in. At that time, whether or not having a former currency trader / Merrill Lynch partner at the helm is an asset will be a topic of hot debate. If such a thing is still permitted under the law. But I guess we should have thought of that before. He did.

On an even more serious note, this week saw Wellington hit by a sizable earthquake. Mercifully, it struck on a Sunday and there were only minor injuries. The advisability of oil drilling near an active fault will now be a topic of even hotter debate. If such a thing is still permitted under the law. There’s nothing 100% pure about an oil disaster gushing thick, black fluid onto the coastline of the lower North Island. With Christchurch still picking up the pieces, even the thought of another major urban area sustaining seismic damage on that scale is sobering to say the very least. So it is not inconceivable we could be facing twin tsunamis of water and debt. The worst of all possible worlds: something to fear and nowhere to hide.

All in all, there’s much to ponder. Some things we can change. To that end, I was proud to participate in the protest march against the GCSB Bill and happy to take my place alongside Dame Anne Salmond as ‘misinformed and politically-aligned’. Some things however we can’t change. It’s probably too late for the global economy. The chickens of 2008 are coming home to roost. In spite of the best efforts of the powers-that-be to spin otherwise, 2 + 2 turns out to equal 4 after all and thanks to them, the world is a day late and a dollar (or should I say, a gold bar) short. Meanwhile, underneath us, the Earth is moving!

I felt I just had to write to you to express my disgust at your second placement in this year’s Durex Sexiest Politician Poll. I have always suspected political polls were rigged in this country but now I have proof. And what would Durex know about sex in the first place.? You are New Zealand’s Sexiest Politician. By far. John Key looks just like the assistant manager at my local Kiwibank, who is not sexy at all. But your brooding looks would not be out of place on Shortland Street (have you ever considered auditioning, I know you would win a lot of new fans? Being so famous already, maybe you wouldn’t even have to audition). I also love the sound of your voice. It doesn’t matter that I can’t understand a word you are saying. The mysterious way your mouth moves more than makes up for it. I recently saw in the news that your pants were on fire. I just had to let you know that from the moment I saw you on Breakfast once, I’ve always imagined you looked hot in pants. Anyway, I know you are a busy and important man so I won’t take up anymore of your time. I’ve already sent Durex a number of letters saying they got it so wrong last year and that you are New Zealand’s sexiest MP. If it’s a write-in vote, I’m going to send in thousands just for you (I know that might sound like cheating but you are worth it). If my campaign is successful, you will be the Durex 2014 Sexiest Politician of the Year. And when you next get up to speak in Parliament, know that I am out there rooting for you.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/12/citizen-a-this-week-with-martyn-bradbury-marama-davidson-simon-prast/feed/6On Germans, Catholics and Treasonous Whores.https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/10/on-germans-catholics-and-treasonous-whores/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/10/on-germans-catholics-and-treasonous-whores/#commentsTue, 09 Jul 2013 17:51:04 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=21975Art imitates life. Or is it the other way round? This week we finish ATC’s season of Anne Boleyn and who would have thought a play about palace intrigue, royal succession, spying and mass state surveillance could be so topical? But this week, New Zealand’s politics were torn from the pages of history.

First there was Judith Collins, emoting in full-Thatcher mode, about the Royal Succession and that a woman will one day ascend the throne ahead of her brother. But never a Roman Catholic! What’s that? Every night in the play, the finer points of English theology have brought the house down. The flamboyantly predatory James I quizzes his new plaything about his religion. “I’m not theological at all: Church of England” responds the dewy-eyed George Villiers. In fact, the whole religion was invented to facilitate Henry’s divorce from Catherine and his marriage to Anne. But this didn’t stop Judith who blustered away, like a royal barge under full sail, cannon firing, flags a-flutter. Magnificent to watch but ultimately irrelevant and anachronistic in a twenty-first century democracy.

So too was Labour’s so-called and ill-fated ‘man-ban’. A policy point to improve gender equality by standing females only in some electorates became, thanks to the helping hand of a blogger from the right, a so-called field day for a lazy press who liked the phrase, even if there wasn’t a story. It was a frenzy and a farce: an own goal for Labour. Points to National for spin of the week. Really, it was much ado about nothing: all intrigue, no information. But that’s the news for you!

The best show in town (aside from us thespians of course) was the Key-Dotcom showdown over the GCSB. “Are your eyes and ears everywhere Master Cromwell?” asks the doomed Cardinal Wolsey in the play, moments before he is lead away. Well, yes, they are it seems. EVERYWHERE! The NSA is listening to everyone and the GCSB wants to hear more. “Did she think I don’t have spies watching the stables, as I have spies everywhere?” says Cromwell. Well, it seems there were spies all over Dotcom’s Coatesville stables. Himself an escapee from the Goldfinger auditions, Dotcom is a master of theatricality. Articulate, razor-sharp and dangerously rich, Cromwell would have recognized a kindred though Germanic spirit.

The drama was palpable. “Why are you turning red, Prime Minister?” “Why are you sweating?” (who writes this stuff?). “You know I know” says Dotcom to Key. “You know I know” says Anne to Cromwell. Line for line, art imitated life imitating art. You could have knocked me down with a feather quill. Howard Brenton wrote my dialogue. Who wrote theirs? Well you might ask. It was riveting stuff and, like all great art, of consequence.

Key shrugged it off at the time. But Dotcom was on his mind. In fact, one could almost see Dotcom’s head on a prime ministerial platter. He wishes! When discussing New Zealand’s royal baby present, yet another state secret, (and royal births being yet another theme of Anne Boleyn), the PM snarked darky “We’re giving them Kim Dotcom”. Towards which, a poem, dedicated to the royal couple, their imminent sprog, and their loyal, treasonous, lying, scheming Ministers throughout the realm. God bless them all.

Unto Us

And when the royal babe was born
The people from downunder
Sent not gold or frankincense:
But a German, thighs of thunder.
Kate and Wills did scratch their heads.
“Seems rather strange to me!
Whatever must he think down there,
That social climber, Key?”
Still, the German grew on them:
“Whatever shall we name him?
He’s just so cute and cuddly
(And what a box he came in!).
Ever after so they lived
As King and Queen of Pom
The royals and their precious babe
And favourite toy, Dotcom.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/10/on-germans-catholics-and-treasonous-whores/feed/8On Julia, John, Judith and Joan Crawfordhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/01/on-julia-john-judith-and-joan-crawford/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/01/on-julia-john-judith-and-joan-crawford/#commentsSun, 30 Jun 2013 19:49:22 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=19449You never really know what goes on in the lives of your neighbours. Their children may seem paragons of impish perfection, their lawns manicured to bowling green smoothness, their his and her Audi Coupes and SUVs sit polished and gleaming in their easy-access driveway.

Across the ditch this week, Julia Gillard met her Waterloo. Her Wellington came in the sanctimonious form of a vainglorious retread, (un)kindly referred to as KRudd by many commentators. I was baffled.

Only Tony Abbott emits a creepier vibe. So now, our ‘lucky’ next-door neighbours can chose between one of two unappealing white men, desert-dust-dry, as their new PM. What a choice! Still, it’s their big, messy bed to make and so they must now lie in it.

Some of our neighbours overseas look enviously at our own beloved leader: how lucky we must be to have such a savvy, skilled hand at the helm.

But as we all know, once we are home alone, the Joan Crawford in John Key is unleashed and the wire coat hangers are pulled out once more from the wardrobe and most of us are quietly beaten.

Maybe Julia Gillard was a ‘bitch’ or a ‘witch’ as some have labelled her. Maybe she was in way over her head and posed a threat to OZ’s future prosperity.

Maybe. Maybe the grass always grows greener (or bluer or redder) on the other side. But this I know. I would trade Julia Gillard for John Key in an eye blink.

For Labour in Ikaroa-Rawhiti , a win is a win is a win. End of story.

For National, that big blue Nancy is fast-becoming a no-friend, a no-friend, a no-friend. End of story. Minus the Maori Party, ACT and United Future, the Natsi dance card is looking less full by the day.

In spite of the NZ Herald and TV3’s concerted attempts to transmogrify Labour’s victory into 50 Shades of Defeat, the facts rather describe a teetering house of-blue-cards, a death-knell to the Maori Party for its ill-conceived romance with with the Right and the awful truth that Key and Co must now dive under the political duvet with even stranger bedfellows to retain power.

Devoid of ideas, solutions and vision, we can look forward to an increasing avalanche of Natsi spin contaminating our mailboxes and emails. But every cuddly animal or cute child we see caught in a Prime Ministerial clench is not proof of genuine concern and widespread popular support . Rather, this obvious, clunky, and risible propaganda reveals the Natsi’s true talent for winning lies in spinning and spinning alone. But what goes around, comes around . Until it stops. And on that fast-approaching day, National will be unspun, undone and dead in the water.

Towards which, a senior National MP, speaking to me on the grounds of anonymity, says that John Key has just two months to cobble together a credible coalition, come up with a single original idea that doesn’t involve the wholesale theft of opposition policy and devise election-winning strategies that provide jobs outside of the financial services industries, casinos, mineral exploitation and the sale of state assets that no one wants to buy.

Tweeting anonymously from Harvard , the senior National MP said Key’s ‘any-way-the-wind-blows’ style was not going down well with the party faithful, who were more and more searching for a leader capable of crushing the opposition in 2014. She also said David Bain was guilty as sin and would not be seeing one red cent of compensation “so long as her arse points down.” An unholy image to end on to be sure!

Readers are advised that resemblance to any politicians careers, alive or dead, are purely intentional, if satirical.

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https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/07/01/on-julia-john-judith-and-joan-crawford/feed/3You Gotta Have Faithhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/06/24/you-gotta-have-faith/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/06/24/you-gotta-have-faith/#commentsMon, 24 Jun 2013 02:15:03 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=19443From the outset, a confession. My first political experience was in 1978, working as a Young Nat trying to win the Roskill seat for….wait for it….John Banks. Like many young people, I had received my politics like a family hand-me down: my Grandmother, God bless her, was a true blue, church-attending Anglican with only unkind things to say about (Roman) Catholics, Rugby League and the Labour Party. She spoke of Muldoon as if he was some latter-day Valentino. I remember the excitement of Election Day, checking off voters from the electoral roll as they voted and making sure all those who had identified themselves as supporters made it to the poll. I got to shake Muldoon’s hand: a smaller man than I had anticipated, slightly green-tinged, but still a powerful presence. Happily for all concerned, Banks lost to Phil Goff and I have not had to soldier on through life, sagging under the knowledge that I had in some way aided and abetted that nincompoop into elected office.

In 2010, when I stood against him for the Supercity Mayoralty, I reminded him of our earlier meeting. Of course he had no memory of it but he gave me a big empty smile, thinking that he had an ally amongst his competitors. Poor John. He didn’t get the intended irony: that in the intervening years I had in fact made a complete recovery and that the very impetus for my campaign was to rid Auckland of his bigoted, self-serving, small-minded incompetence. But situational awareness (and irony) were never John’s strong suits. At one debate at the Museum, I challenged him about his ‘Less wishbone, more backbone’ billboards. “John” I said “I just don’t get what you mean: are you a chicken or a turkey?” The audience erupted into helpless laughter. I turned to smile at John, who then, as now, finds himself to be no laughing matter (perhaps the only person in the country). Those beady, close set eyes drilled into me over a fixed grin that promised revenge. He tried the next night in Castor Bay, but instead ended up in a near fist-fight with Andrew Williams after implying the North Shore Mayor was in fact inebriated. Len Brown had to physically intervene. Colin Craig and I looked on, bewildered, bemused and amazed.

The wheels came off Banks’ campaign that night and he became increasingly incoherent, if you could imagine such a thing. At one of the final debates at the Town Hall (to which I was not invited, coming 5th with only the top four invited), he cut a sad, strange, bitter figure. Only Paul Holmes’ gentle, respectful line of questioning saved him from abject public humiliation. But as we all now know, that’s what lay in store for the former Minister of Police and Mayor of Auckland City. Clutching his carpetbag, he moved in on Epsom, his passage eased over a notorious cup of tea with a fellow carpetbagger, imported from Merrill Lynch to sell the country. With a casual contempt for democracy, they sipped Earl Grey, signalling ‘God’s Will” ‘to the good people of that leafy suburb . Sadly, these two political James Bonds failed to realise the only other item on their table was a radio mike, transmitting to the world and Winston Peters the spin and cynical extent of their discussion.

This little tea party has been the gift that keeps on giving. With the inch he was given, Winston sprinted the mile and New Zealand First was returned to Parliament. Perhaps more effective in opposition than in Government, Peters has gone on to score points and claim scalps like no other. Incredibly, it seems that he now holds the balance of power. The same cannot be said of Banks. The small man with big dreams of becoming our next Governor – General, or perhaps one day our first President (true), is about to front up in the dock for electoral fraud charges. Having spent time in close proximity, I’m not surprised. The only cause he served was his own. Meeting Len Brown for the first time, I was struck by his compassion, sincerity, ability to laugh at himself and elegant mind. He had been a solicitor in a previous life and I have a law degree. I respected his intellectual rigour, his ability to think on his feet and pursue an argument to a logical conclusion. You could spend your life looking for logic in John Banks and the pickings would be slim. Beyond the facile script and glib talking points, mainly about him and his rise from Struggle St to Victoria Ave, there was nothing there. I guess he would call himself a conviction politician. And if all goes to plan, he will shortly be convicted.

During the 2010 campaign, I also got to spend quite a lot of time with Colin Craig. We were both outsiders, though of course he brought a small fortune to the table. He came third, spending about $16 for every vote (my shoestring extended to about $1.30). Colin was a charming competitor I have to say and gave no hint of his Christian crusade, his bizarre thoughts on promiscuous New Zealand women or his passionate desire to purge Helensville of John Key for being too-gay. When he sued The Civilian for attributing to him some hilarity about Noah, rainbows and God’s revenge, I had trouble reconciling such ill-advised buffoonery with the smart, seemingly savvy man who laughed at Banks’ and told the Town Hall debate he would rather vote for me ahead of any of the other candidates. He and his Conservatives are now angling for power in high places. You make strange bedfellows in politics and when it comes to a Key – Craig coalition, I guess only time will tell who is too-gay for who.

We are now on the cusp of or second Supercity election and thus far, only TV chef John Palino has put his hand up to stand against Len. I’m all for participation in the political process and wish him well. Of course, I think his candidacy is doomed and Len will win again by a comfortable majority. To date Auckland has never elected an American or a TV Chef as its Mayor and I don’t think it’s about to start. If he really wanted to make a lasting contribution, he should donate the millions he’s about to waste on a campaign- to- nowhere to the City Mission. But that’s his choice and, in a democracy, choice is what it’s all about.

Having said my piece in 2010, I’m happy to sit this election out. For what it’s worth, I will be voting for Len. In many ways, he was given a hospital pass in this first term. Central government, stung by its massive defeat, has done everything it could to sabotage and subvert plans for making Auckland the most liveable city in the world. National believes more pokie tables and a Convention Centre will fix what ails us up here in the Queen City. Forget about a functioning inner city rail loop, it’s the Casino that counts. I shake my head and to this day am baffled how a single New Zealander, in the face of a tsunami of evidence of corruption and incompetence, could still be convinced to vote against their best interests.

Right now, I’m happy to be strutting my stuff on stage as Thomas Cromwell in Auckland Theatre Company’s (hit) production of Anne Boleyn. I haven’t been on stage in over five years and have loved every minute of the creative process. That’s why I am drawn to the arts: it’s about making things, not taking things. From Howard Brenton’s marvellous script, I believe we have made something special and feel so proud and privileged to share it with large and appreciative houses. A few night’s ago, a huge school’s contingent cheered and applauded the rather racy man-to-man kissing scenes between James I and his favourite George Villiers (superb performances by Stephen Lovatt and new-comer Jordan Mooney). Times are a’changing. I hope the next generation will never have to fight for the right to love as its heart directs. Afterwards, their questions were smart and interesting. They loved it: the rise and fall of Anne, the birth of Elizabeth I, the creation of the King James Bible and all the palace intrigue. Though I might have many concerns for our country under this current regime, I have great faith in the future.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/06/24/you-gotta-have-faith/feed/1About Simon Prasthttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/06/17/about-simon-prast/
Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:11:13 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=18443Simon Prast graduated from Theatre Corporate Drama School in 1984, having completed a Law Degree at the University of Auckland the year before.

He has worked at an actor at Theatre Corporate, Downstage, Mercury Theatre and Auckland Theatre Company, which he founded upon the Mercury’s demise in 1992.

For ATC, he produced 60 plays from 1993 – 2003. During that time, he also directed many productions, including TWELVE ANGRY MEN, CLOSER, THE CRIPPLE OF INNISHMAN, ART, WIT, THE JUDAS KISS, HARURU MAI, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, HAIR, THE PLAY ABOUT THE BABY, THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW and THE GRADUATE. He last appeared on stage for ATC in 2004 as a Roman senator in CALIGULA. His last production as a director for ATC was The PILLOWMAN in 2007.

Television and film credits include, GLOSS, SHORTLAND STREET, HERCULES, XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS, SERIAL KILLERS, HIS IS NOT MY LIFE, GO GIRLS, A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, THE SINKING OF THE RAINBOW WARRIOR, EREBUS: THE AFTERMATH and WHEN LOVE COMES.

Simon was the director of the inaugural Auckland Festival, AK03. In 2010, he ran as a candidate for Mayor in Auckland’s first Supercity election.